


The Fifth Wall

by Mia Djojowasito (peppersasen)



Series: The Fifth Wall & B-Sides [1]
Category: American Psycho - All Media Types, Original Work
Genre: 2019, Acting, Actors, Beyond Therapy - Freeform, Christopher Durang, F/M, Legal, March 12, Other, method acting, method actors, poor [wo]man's copyright, poor man's copyright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 23:45:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppersasen/pseuds/Mia%20Djojowasito
Summary: Two method actors live together.





	1. I

Prudence was so excited she couldn’t feel her brain, yet her brain could feel her skull. It was as though her brain had melted and now the liquid matter that was her brain splashed and swirled around in her skull. Her head spun.

In her mind’s eye, she could see the back of her own head. Filmed with a handheld camera, a boom mic catching the sound of the shuffling of her feet. Like an opening scene out of an art house film with every single art house cliché written into it.

Prudence cringed at the thought, and then realising she was in no position to be picky about roles, uncringed.

She could feel a camera man’s energy following behind her. Prudence turned around walking backwards through the hallway for a split second, nobody was there. Twirled around to make the full 360 back into reality and headed to her apartment’s door. _Patrick’s_ apartment’s door, to be precise. She was just living there rent-free.

Prudence couldn’t wait to tell Patrick what had occurred at the meeting today, and she knew Patrick would respond with an, “I told you so.”

She _hated_ it when Patrick was right—as he often was. Only this time, she didn’t care.

Usually everything was done by phone, email, or IM. So, when Prudence received a Google Calendar notification for an in-person lunch meeting with her agent, Charlotte, at Dorsia, a nearby restaurant, Prudence just _knew_ she was about to be dropped.

There would be no other explanation as to why Charlotte would want to meet in person, she knew it would be bad news. Sure, Charlotte’s had her shady moments, but Prudence trusted that at least she was a decent enough human being to deliver news _this_ unpleasant in person.

But Patrick insisted, “nonsense, she wouldn’t _drop_ you.”

And Patrick was right.


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two method actors live together.

Earlier that day, though, Prudence was totally convinced that this would be the one time Patrick would be wrong about something. At the same time, for the first time, she wanted so badly for him to be right. When Prudence arrived at the restaurant, it finally sunk in just how doomed she was.

“What the _shit_ , Charlotte?!” Prudence cursed her agent under her breath. As if dropping your client in a room full of power-lunchers would make it any easier on them to deal with it! Bad call.

It wasn’t the fact that it was an upscale restaurant that daunted her. Prudence was accustomed to the _lifestyle_ , she just wasn’t accustomed to what that lifestyle _meant_. She suddenly felt the disorienting sensation of being self-conscious and insecure in a type of environment familiar to her.

Today Prudence wasn’t at a restaurant at some nice hotel with her parents where she could order whatever she wanted. She wasn’t tagging along today. Today she was her own entity, and now she _would_ be judged for gorging on mouthfuls of her chocolate mousse with a tablespoon. Now _she_ was the grown-up and being here actually _meant_ something.

Only now that meaning distorted what she saw, and what she saw she could not navigate. No longer was it simply a free-flow of all you can eat, now a maze-like structure had been placed over it with designated boxes representing her place the hierarchy, where she “belonged”, a statement of her station in life.

Not to mention, without her disapproving parents to foot the bill, she could barely afford an appetiser at this establishment. She was on her own now.

Her ears started ringing, Prudence’s heart pounded so hard, her ears popped, and now she could hear the sound of her own heartbeat in her ear drums. She wondered if Charlotte was just being sadistic, was she pushing Prudence to over the edge? She didn’t need help with that, she was already on the verge of—

“Can I help you?” a curious maître d’ with her head tilted curiously. It didn’t sound like this was the first time she said it, it sounded like the maître d’ had just repeated herself.

Dressed in a heavy partly-hand-sewn vintage pleated red skirt with the sort of Chinese pattern that might’ve been trendy in the late ‘70s, a white chiffon blouse with bishop sleeves and ribbon collars, brown shoes with a matching vintage monogrammed purse, and a navy canvas bag that looked like it was the only thing about her #OOTD that didn’t come from yesterday, Prudence with her medium-length feathered-out hair didn’t look like she was from around here. Or _now_. Unless she was dressed that way because she was a whack job, in which case the maître d’ thought she _did_ belong in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Prudence was too nervous to see what the maître d’ looked like at all, all she saw were the line of perfect, unnaturally white upper teeth and a blur of blonde hair.

“Do you have a reservation?”

Prudence dropped all formalities. She figured there was no point in formalities if this was going to be the first and last time she’d come here, “no. But my agent—” Prudence couldn’t think. “My agent is inside... I think _she’s about to drop me_ ,” she said gravely to the stranger.

“Okay,” the maître d’ responded, almost with calmness of a 911 operator. “Do you have an appointment with _her_?”

“Yes!” She looked at the maître d’ as if she’d just asked her a completely absurd question. “Why else would I be at a place like this?!”

The maître d’ then escorted her into the restaurant like a lost child she had found at a mall.

“There she is!” Prudence pointed at her.

Charlotte, one hand holding up her mobile phone to an ear, waved her free hand at their direction and, as soon as the maître d’ was certain that Prudence wasn’t some sort of psycho and the lady at the table recognised and knew her, turned to one of the two watchful security guards at the door, shook her head and mouthed a “no” to signal that the oddly-dressed Prudence was not a threat and that everything was under control, and let Prudence go to get herself seated.

“Thank you,” Prudence muttered to the maître d’ without looking at her. Her eyes were fixed on her agent, her hands were trembling.

When Prudence reached the table, Charlotte was still on the phone, apparently speaking to Bob, her “desk assistant”, whose voice was audible to Prudence from the other end of the line through Charlotte’s mobile phone speaker.

Charlotte was so messy and disorganised, she had to have two assistants; an in-office “desk assistant” and Andrew, her “personal runner” employed by her on her own payroll, who fetched all her coffees and ran errands for her so she could be at places like this instead of repurchasing replacements items for the ones that she’d misplaced the week prior.

*

One time when Prudence came by the office, Bob told Prudence that she was the first client Charlotte ever had whose name she hadn’t confused with any of the other actors she represented.

Prudence’s heart swelled and for a millisecond she felt special until Andrew chimed in adding, “yeah, she always remembers you as her one illegal client... You think you can get thrown into jail for this?”

“Andrew, she’s not _technically_ illegal,” Bob snipped. “She’s just on a pseudo-work visa.”

“Whatever,” Andrew rolled his eyes and sashayed away.

*

Today at the restaurant, Prudence wished Charlotte would get off her damn phone and just rip off the band-aid. The suspense was _killing_ her.

But Bob wasn’t done with Charlotte today, he seemed to have a lot to say to Charlotte over the phone and, knowing Bob, he was going to keep her on the line with him for as long as he felt was needed.

“Shouldn’t you speak to Legal about this?” Bob’s tiny phone voice said, referring to the agency’s legal department.

“Oh, Legal doesn’t need to know about this,” Charlotte reassured Bob cheerfully. “They’re such buzzkill!”

Prudence could hear Bob’s phone voice crack into the speaker again, small and distant, begin a protest but Charlotte interrupted him with a, “Prudence is here. Toodles.”

And with that, she finally hung-up on Bob and turned to Prudence, with a warm, excited smile. Prudence had already begun a dying inside; the kind of slow, agonising death that karma reserved for only the worst of souls, when Charlotte gleefully pushed a thin stack of paper toward her side of the table. She did it with a grin and that little ‘60s jiggle thing she did when she was excited.

“Sorry for the super short notice, but the audition for this is tomorrow—at nine,” Charlotte informed her. “Do you think you pull this off?”

Prudence looked down and examined the thin stack of paper in front of her. Lifting the first half blank sheet at the very top, she found a second sheet with what appeared to be a list of characters, followed by regular typed-up screenplay. One, two, three, four, five, six sheets of paper, she counted. Four of which were the meat of it.

But this was different. It had a _cover sheet_. The half empty sheet at the top was a ‘cover’ sheet stapled to the script. Like a cover letter to CVs but for sides. Prudence didn’t even know that was a thing.

These were _fancy_ sides. Scripts were always easier to read than people, but what could this possibly mean? This might just be _special_.

The title on the cover read, “THE FIFTH WALL” in capital letters.

Below the title, there was a line that Prudence initially mistook for a tagline that read:

“Premise: Two method actors live together.”

And then followed by another line which read:

“Concept: Two method actors’ characters intertwined between roles.”

Prudence didn’t understand what that meant, until she read the first page of the script.

The second page was dedicated to the list of characters. In this case, there were only two; an actor and an actress. None of the characters had names, throughout the script it said, just “ACTOR” and “ACTRESS”.

Then below it was a table of two columns with seven rows each under the title, “Season 1”. Under the first column read “ACTOR”, also in capital letters, under it listed:

  1. Hamlet (“Hamlet”, stage)
  2. [LINGERS DURING UNEMPLOYMENT PERIOD]
  3. [CONFIDENTIAL]
  4. [CONFIDENTIAL]
  5. [CONFIDENTIAL]
  6. [CONFIDENTIAL]
  7. TBD



Next to the Actor’s column was the actress’s column, again with “ACTRESS” in capital letters and then a list of characters along with the works of fiction they were associated with:

  1. Ophelia (“Hamlet”, stage)
  2. Laura Wingfield (“The Glass Menagerie”, made-for-TV film)
  3. Laura Wingfield (“The Glass Menagerie”, made-for-TV film)
  4. [CONFIDENTIAL]
  5. [CONFIDENTIAL]
  6. [CONFIDENTIAL]
  7. TBD



It appeared to Prudence that each numbered row represented an episode for that season. And in the first season, the characters were to live through three to five roles each. Fuckery was sure to ensue. Two characters within the same play can’t even get along, what’s to guarantee two from different eras would?!

The first season would start with two characters from the same show/play/film (story) and then they would go separate ways. Prudence went through the sides, her heart racing with excitement.

The pilot episode featured “Hamlet/Ophelia” in “plain 21st century English”. A churlish, unemployed Hamlet with a newly-employed, full-of-hope Laura who’d just shed off her Ophelia skin. Can you _imagine_? Surely Laura wouldn’t drown herself in sorrow with a new acting gig to live for!

Imagine the tension.

Imagine the ego-bruising.

Imagine having to live with _that_.

A psychological disaster just waiting to happen…

She was used to getting the leftovers of more desirable, “bankable” actresses. But this. An oasis of a script to quench the thirst of the thirstiest of actors... It was like a genie in a bottle who granted you to wishes for even more wishes for eternity, a never-ending gift that kept on giving. The Holy Grail of all roles.

She wanted this _so_ bad…

But why was _she_ , of all people, getting this?

It felt a little too good to be true, but she wasn’t going to complain about this. She wasn’t even going to ask Charlotte any questions. She would show up tomorrow at the audition—

“If it’s too good to be true, then it probably—” began a sensible voice in her head.

Prudence decided it was time to make the deliberate choice to terminate brain function and indulge her thirst.

Still stunned, Prudence couldn’t believe how far off the mark she was about the meeting. She was utterly convinced Charlotte was here to deliver bad news. She thought it must’ve been seriously bad news too. Something beyond the fact that Prudence hadn’t booked any paying gigs since she’d arrived in LA, something awful like Charlotte finally spoke to the agency’s legal department who’ve finally determined that she wasn’t worth the hassle. Or _worse_.

Images of her packing her bags by the next week, scrolling through the cheapest tickets back home she could find online, and Patrick driving her over the airport, had already raced through her mind on her way here, yet… Here she was.

“Oh.” Prudence had a certain look on her face. A look that was unreadable, probably even to herself if she saw herself in a mirror.

“What?” Charlotte asked.

“What?” Prudence echoed absently.

“ _Why_ do you have that look on your face?”

“Uh. I just, I’m—” she stumbled. “I’m _relieved_. I thought I might’ve been in trouble.”

“Why on earth would you think _that_?”

“Uhm. Because I don’t naturally belong in a fancy power-lunchy restaurant full of suits? I mean what’s a girl like me doing in a place like this?” Prudence let out a small high-pitched nervous chuckle. “I thought you were going to drop me, and I thought you chose to drop me here, for like a nice lunch, like a last supper kind of thing?”

“Oh honey, _noooo_ ,” she leaned forward a few centimetres with a genuine look of concern. “I asked to meet in person because this is special. I couldn’t just email this to you!”

“You could’ve, though.”

“No, I could not have. No digital copies permitted. This, my dear, was handed to me at the office by the author’s personal security courier,” Charlotte explained. “Printed on copy-proof paper.”

Again, Prudence looked down at the sheet of paper. It didn’t look “copy-proof” at all, it just looked like a regular sheet of paper. Then again, she’d never seen copy-proof paper before, so she’d have no idea what she was looking at or what copy-proof was supposed to look like.

“I _had_ to hand this to you in person,” Charlotte added with a special emphasis on ‘ _had_ ’ and arched brows for the importance of it all.

Prudence looked back up to Charlotte’s face. This was the first time Prudence was given a script that could not be emailed. What a bizarre thing. Breathing heavily through her gaping, unclosed mouth. Every single muscle of her face loose, at the mercy of gravity. She had a drunken look of ecstasy to her face.

 _No, no, no…_ She tried not to get her hopes up. _You know wiser than to get this excited!_

She could feel her cheeks, and then her face, and then her eyeballs heat up… And could feel the lower lids of her eye dampen. If only this would happen when she actually _needed_ to cry on cue.

Almost robotically, she turned her face down to the script again. Hunched over the script in an almost vulture-like posture, hair started falling on both sides of her face, with her hands clasped and slipped between her knees, she couldn’t even bare to touch it.

“Are you sniffing on that?”

“What? No.” Prudence crinkled her nose. “God, no. Why would you think that?!”

“Well don’t you start sniffing on things,” Charlotte begun.

“Charlotte you don’t have to matronise me,” she said trying not to offend Charlotte in the process. “I’m a grown woman.”

“Well I’m just saying,” she said with dignity. “It happens to the best of us.”

Prudence squinted. What did she mean by that? Charlotte sniffled, and then quickly cleared her throat as if to muffle the sniffle with the throat noise.

_Speaking of snorting things..._

“What happened to the ‘Candy Striper Strange’ audition? Have you heard back from them?”

“No. I haven’t,” Charlotte said as she opened her purse to find something. “But I’m glad you’ve started asking me whether I’ve heard from people. Good for you!”

“Thanks?” unsure of herself or how to respond to that.

Charlotte never seemed to finally locate whatever she was looking for in her purse, and returned her attention to her client. “Oh, never mind,” Charlotte said t herself. “I was beginning to worry about your drive.”

“I _am_ driven,” Prudence said defensively.

“Oh well you had me worried there.”

“I feel ambitious enough just being here,” she shifted in her seat. “Maybe I’m just being Javanese…”

And that was the true. Back in Indonesia, ‘actresses’ liked to play coy. Because actresses rarely, if ever, were trained to be professional actors. Because becoming an “actress” was a fleeting thing. It was the equivalent of American high school students making the school’s cheerleading squad, so was how girls established their popularity back in the schools Prudence attended in Jakarta. All the girls at school did it. As a coming-of-age thing. Some of them even had daddy buy them a role on some trashy soap opera.

But Prudence was a late bloomer and only begun after having graduated with a Master’s degree at the ripe age of 23 and spent a couple of years working for a human rights organisation and interning at the United Nations. Everything would’ve gone well if she stuck to the serious career and focused on it, but at the age of 25 she still wanted to be one of the popular girls she never was when she was 15 too. So, she decided that now it was _her_ turn.

Unfortunately for Prudence, her friends were not as pleased for her as she thought they’d be. They were angry and outraged—and hated that Prudence pursued acting while they were trapped in unhappy marriages, which were their own faults, because none of them wanted to end up unhappy spinsters. (Prudence figured that if a spinster _must_ be miserable, then at least she’s a _free_ miserable person.) She had nobody to cheer for her. Until she met Patrick.

Despite the fact that her only acting ‘education’ was consisted of reading copies of “Garasu no Kamen” until the corners curled, Prudence managed to get some acting experience that were not bought for; but she never could get very far with her refusal to play the colonialism game. Play along with the classist, racist standards that were considered normal—where being in a skin-whitening commercial was a way to get your foot in the door, and you let some clueless casting director determine what social class you _look_.

Prudence estimated, realistically, that if she had played the colonialism game, she would’ve been somewhere between C-list to B-list in Indonesia by now. She was never under any illusion that she would ever make A-list, not deluded enough to believe that would ever happen. But Prudence didn’t play the game and before she took off for LA she was niche theatre actress that only got cast if an English-speaking actress was required.

And Indonesian actresses weren’t supposed to last. And they certainly weren’t supposed to come to LA and openly audition, they were supposed to claim some director personally asked for them even when all they had access to were open auditions. But nobody ever wanted to admit or be seen auditioning. Everybody was supposedly miraculously “discovered” by a modelling scout at a mall—but Prudence knew they all secretly, thirstily hustled.

But that’s not to say Prudence necessarily _enjoyed_ being in America. She liked being in America as much as Americans like being at the DMV.

“Well, you’re here now.” Charlotte said reassuringly. “Here we badger our agents, you can badger me about any role you want.”

Prudence wasn’t sure how she felt when Charlotte put it that way... Prudence didn’t want to be _Americanised_. All she wanted was to be an actress, she didn’t want to be American _too_.

 _Not everything’s that great in America, Charlotte!_ Prudence thought. But wasn’t going to verbalise it, she’d made a mindful choice to avoid complaining or offending her host.

Tempting as it was to give America a taste of its own medicine, Prudence felt it unfair to take it out on Charlotte. Charlotte was a _good_ American. And Prudence wasn’t about to become an _Ugly_ Indonesian, stoop down to their level, and mirror all the rude Americans she’d encountered travelling from Europe to Japan. She was not going to repeat the condescending tone she overheard. She never had to eavesdrop because they never _could_ keep their voices down. She was going to be polite, be a gracious guest to her host, which meant she was to bite her cutting Javanese tongue.

Prudence was in America because every age had its ruling civilisation and currently the American Empire (along with the rest of the Anglophone world as its allies) was the ruling culture du jour. Just like China was once, or Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia were. And quite frankly, Prudence couldn’t wait for it to be another culture’s turn to be “It” (she wanted to a new wave of this twisted mental colonialism—the current “It” she felt was getting a little cocky). She was here out of necessity, because necessities are what many monopolies sell. Except this monopoly didn’t always welcome you as a visitor.

Prudence thought of her trip to America as a villager’s visits to the town’s sole butcher: The villager would be forced to see and exchange pleasantries with that one and only butcher in the village; even if they were mean, ogled at your bum and boobies, and their wife gave you the stinky-eyes every time you came by. It was an unpleasant errand you’d put yourself through. But if you wanted your meat, you better put up with his bullshit. ‘ _Because one must obtain one’s slab of satisfyingly-chewy sirloin. Otherwise, one would be a balls-sucking vegan_ ,’ she’d pep talk herself on a bad day. This was a matter of survival.

America had gavaged itself onto her, just as it was thrust upon the rest of world. At least she wasn’t alone in this. Suffering always _was_ easier to go through as a collective. She was the visitor here, yet she was the one who felt colonised.

Prudence was aware that random civilians were allowed firearms in America—perhaps a little _too_ aware. If she was neurotic and easily startled to begin with, now she was full-blown paranoid. The dizzyingly fearful thoughts that haunted her when she allowed her mind to wander, thoughts of hot metal ripping through her body, the adrenaline rush that stayed with her into her waking life when she opened her eyes in the mornings and followed her into her waking life.

She couldn’t understand how the locals could live with the gripping fear she lived with every day, were they _immune_ to it? The idea that a person queuing behind her at the deli might be carrying a gun drove her insane—she’d have nightmares about being shot at petrol stations and practically anywhere humans were present. The drugstores, the juice bars, the cinemas. All places were dangerous. The way an elderly Sofia Portello lookalike in front of her reached into her bag, not knowing what she might pull out of her crochet handbag, could instil so much terror in her adult, productive-aged self. But what are terrorists _supposed_ to look like?

And only person she had to blame for going through this was herself because she knew this well-before she decided to live in LA. _Why can’t the place to go to be an actress be someplace gun-free instead, anyways? It was a war zone up here, for heavens sakes! If the American Empire weren’t such a monopoly, the Indonesian government would’ve issued a travel warning on this war zone by now!_

But so far, nothing terribly terrible had happened to Prudence since she arrived in LA. Even the ‘bad’ stuff, the ‘dreadful crappy shitty’ scripts were still decent compared to what she was used to getting back home. In the three months she’d been in LA, she had never once screwed any of her auditions up on purpose (which she often did in Jakarta to flee a casting scene) because something about the script or the casting office put her off or waved red flags.

She probably shouldn’t complain, she hadn’t been trafficked here into forced labour. She made an _adult choice_ to be here. This is what adults do to make a living, they go to places that make them unhappy all the time. She was _adulting_ and she ought to be proud of herself.

As a matter of fact, just last week Prudence put up with some crap in the name of adulting at the “Candy Striper Strange” audition…

*****

Prudence’s giddiness from her excitement for the “Candy Striper Strange” audition subsided when she arrived at the address given to her, and the ‘casting office’ turned out to be a very large warehouse-like building with an equally large parking lot. Patrick, who drove her and dropped her off there, seemed familiar with the complex, and didn’t say anything—he’d usually had a piece of advice or two, so she concluded that it wasn’t sketchy. If Patrick thought something was a bad idea, like the time Patrick advised Prudence to not take the trains or the buses in LA, he would’ve said so. So, it must be legit and safe, if a little odd.

After all, “Candy Striper Strange” _was_ an ‘experimental’ short film, it would only make sense that things should be a little unusual. It was an experimental film based on The Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. They said they wanted an ‘ethnically ambiguous’ actress, which Prudence just understood to mean the-ignorant-Americans-are-looking-at-an-Indonesian-girl-but-they-don’t-know-what-they’re-looking-at. (If Hollywood can cast Chinese actresses to play geishas, who knows what they expect Indonesians to look like!)

Still, the place was disorienting. Just a large warehouse with few signage. No front desk, just men who looked like _roadies_ of all things. Prudence figured they must be film crew. There were three of them. Inked, rugged, and gruffer than your usual film crew—at least the ones Prudence usually dealt with on film sets in Jakarta.

They were large and tall, unlike the bored manicured receptionists at your usual audition, but looked much friendlier than the manicured ones. It didn’t take much courage for Prudence to approach them. They were even taller and larger up close. On average, she was below eye-level with their nipples. Since the place wasn’t swarming with other actors, she immediately got their attention.

“Uhm, excuse me, would you happen to know—” they all stopped into a silence, looking downward, waiting to hear what she had to say to them, when it suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t know who the casting director would be. _Fuck_. And then went with, “I’m here to meet the casting director?”

“What casting director?” one of the large men asked loudly.

Apparently, another man overheard the word “casting director” and approached the group. He had on a plain white t-shirt, a slim fit plaid lumberjack shirt, thick black horn-rimmed glasses, and a worn-out baseball cap that made him look like a reliable, feet-firmly-on-the-ground kind of guy.

“No casting director today! You must be—” he exclaimed, he looked as though he was about to stretch his hand out for a handshake when a second man appeared from behind Prudence and joined in.

“Yeah, no casting director,” a second man cut through. “Just us.” This second one wore a pair of round cable temple glasses that looked antique. He had a precious air about him—it wouldn’t shock her if it turned out he was pretentious enough to insist on calling them ‘spectacles’ too.

The one with the thick black horn-rimmed glasses introduced himself as the director, who then introduced the one with the round antique glasses as the writer. So not only was the director there, the writer was too. But no casting director.

 _How refreshing to not have a casting director around_ , Prudence thought.

The Director and the Writer walked her into one of the warehouses, she looked behind her to see that the roadies followed them too. It had intimidating high ceilings and looked like a hangar without the parked aircraft. She wasn’t paying attention when the Director apparently mumbled something to a lady who’d been inside prepping something the whole time who then gently took Prudence by the arm, guided her to the middle of the room, and handled her by the upper-arms as if the lady was trying to position Prudence at a specific spot on the floor. The lady then strapped her onto some sort of corset-type thing.

The last time Prudence remembered being fussed about like this was when she rented a yukata in Japan. She reckoned many actresses enjoyed being fussed about like this, but it just made her feel awkward.

As the Harness Lady continued fitting and securing the corset, the Writer explained that the Lucy character was hospital volunteer who “didn’t necessarily have a drug problem” but just had an addictive personality. Inspired by a 1994 book entitled “Reviving Ophelia”, she decides she wants to become a psychiatrist, so she volunteers at a psych ward.

 _Why can’t you just have a drug problem—and what is an “addictive personality” even?_ Prudence wanted to ask the writer, but she didn’t want to put him off by not knowing what an “addictive personality” was, she’d Google that later. Prudence had a feeling that that was somehow based on someone’s real life reality and asking questions about it might piss the wrong person off.

The Writer then continued babbling around about how, “in ancient astrology, "each planet represents an area in life. Venus would present beauty, culture, love. Uranus represents eccentricity, electric energy, and the element of surprise. Saturn carries with it a responsible, burdensome energy. Jupiter is a happy, jolly, humorous, larger-than-life planet that could be literally over-the-top. Neptune is associated with dreams, illusions, and the ocean. So, for example, an everyday life example of Neptunian energy would rule drugs, psychedelics, fiction, and the film industry—among other things.”

Prudence already knew this. This was exactly why she was drawn to this script and fell in love with it in the first place, Lucy’s magical powers included planetary manipulation—and the problem with that was, no matter how well she moved a celestial object to change the astrological weather, something else was bound to shift like parts of a Rubik’s cube. It was a little complex, the sides she received from Charlotte noted that her magical powers “involve time-freezing by the millisecond to minimise collateral damage on human life”, and production required that whoever they cast have a good understanding of the advanced astrology. But that didn’t appear to be the aspect of the “Candy Striper Strange” Universe that the Writer was interested in exploring today.

“Well,” the writer continued. “In the Candy Striper Strange Universe, the gaseous planets are snortable.”

“Snortable?” Prudence muttered, she wasn’t sure she heard that correctly. _Ugh._

This is what Prudence hated about getting sides as opposed to scripts, she’d get ambushed with new information about the script on-the-spot during auditions like this. But she wasn’t about to complain. Not today. That was far better than anything she’d usually get back home. In Indonesia, unless it was a serious niche theatre company—with a small, limited pool of Francophonie local actors to work with, you wouldn’t get the honour of having sides at all. “Auditions” were just an opportunity for casting directors to have a look at your look, maybe do some poking and prodding, the last thing they seemed to care about in Jakarta was the actual acting.

“Do you know which of planets in our solar system are gaseous?” the Director, who seemed more scientifically-inclined, asked.

“Uhm,” Prudence became a little nervous about being quizzed like this. “Neptune… Uranus… Uh, Jupiter?”

“Good,” the writer said. “And Saturn.”

The director appeared to signal something to someone with a nod, and next thing she knew, one of the roadies clipped on some wires to the harness. And without warning, they somehow hoisted Prudence up like the Indonesian flag on Independence Day.

“Eeeek!” Prudence squeaked. Her first instinct was grip onto the wires on her side, terrified she might tip over, and then looked frantically to her left and to her right to locate whatever button somebody pressed to boost her up.

“Whoops, sorry!” said one of the other roadies. “Shoulda warned ya!”

“Eheheh…” Prudence laughed nervously, and managed to squeak a not very convincing, “it’s okay!”

“Oh!” another one of the roadies appeared to have just remembered something they shouldn’t have forgotten, and to his horror, he dragged across the floor what looked like a thicker version of a wrestling mat. Prudence estimated she must’ve been approximately 180 centimetres above the ground. _Around Patrick’s height_ , she thought fondly.

“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” asked the Director.

“Nope,” she promptly answered and shook her head before the Director or Writer had a chance to recast her. She didn’t know what to do with her legs and feet, they just dangled there. She looked at her feet and wiggled them around cluelessly.

“What, you’ve never been on one of these things before?”

“No…” Prudence shook her head, and probably out of nervousness she blurted, “uhm, I thought outer space scenes were filmed using gravitational stuff thingies you rent from NASA?” Both the Writer and Director looked at her as if she’d just made a ridiculous statement. “No? So, nobody rents real anti-gravitational stuff for their films?” she asked again. The pair let out what Prudence could only describe as an ‘intellectual chuckle’, but she failed to see what was so funny. _No, then... Okay. Fine._ She suddenly felt like she was in an MS Paint production.

“That’s cute,” someone said. Prudence was so embarrassed she didn’t want to think who said it or look the direction the voice came from to find out.

“Okay, so where we?” the Writer said with his eyes closed. He continued talking with his hands about this addictive personality of Lucy’s that Prudence was previously completely unprivy to.

“Sniffable,” Prudence tried to be helpful even though she wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean as they were included in the sides Charlotte emailed her.

“Yes, so in the Candy Striper Strange Universe, the gaseous planets are _snortable_ ,” the writer continues. Prudence’s heart sank, her paranoid thinking telling her that saying ‘sniffable’ instead of ‘snortable’ might just be the faux pas she needed to make to lose this gig, anxiety rushed through her for a split second until the writer made a clear indication of not intending to acknowledge the slight mistake. He had a bigger vision to devise and he was going to ensure the Director and his actress help him realise this vision. “But Neptune’s nitrogen isn’t the nitro as we _Earthlings_ know it. This is _magical_ nitro…”

The writer, who seems to be on some magical substance or herb himself, suddenly fell silent. Whatever he had taken seemed to have just kicked in that very second.

“So, when she inhales these planets’ gases,” the Director took over.

And then as if suddenly awoken by the director’s voice, the writer echoes, sounding increasingly slurred, “soooo, when she inhales these plaaaanets’ gases, the effects are similar to many recreational substances on Earth… And theeee effects parallel the traits those planets represent in astrology... Except no recreational substances are illegal in space.”

Prudence knew this. She was the only female student in the “Air & Space Law” course in her LL.B. programme in Indonesia. Mining asteroids might be illegal, but snorting planetary gas for personal, recreational use was certainly not. Yet another reason to want to be involved with the project… _This_ — _all_ of it—was right up her alley. She wanted so badly for this film to be a success just so she could rub this into her old law professors’ faces. Prudence smirked an ungodly smirk she hoped neither the Writer or the Director caught before straightening her face back.

“So, Neptune’s gas is…” the Director checked his notes to be sure. “Neptune’s gas would have similar affects to LSD.”

“Not muggle-grade LSD!” the Writer made sure to set the director straight.

“No,” the Director reaffirmed this statement.

“And weed.”

“Yes, marijuana, and magic mushrooms,” the director continued reading off his list. “Uranian gas; MDMA, speed, Ritalin. Jupiterian gas; good booze on a happy drunk, LOL-ing, laughing-gas kind of effect on snorter… Saturn; caffeine.”

“So! She’s a candy striper at a hospital because she wants to be a shrink when she grows up,” the Writer seemed to have restarted explaining Lucy’s background from the very beginning and repeated everything he’d already said earlier. “But she has an addictive personality, you see. She steals cherry flavoured coughs from the pharmacy… Think Baby Gregory House with Baby Vicodin.”

“Okay.” She wished she could say something more assuring like, “sure, I can do that!” But “okay” was the most honest thing she could come up with, and she was sticking with it.

“We need to see you snort a planet now,” the Director said. “So, imagine you’re floating in outer space and you’re snorting one of the gaseous planets—say, Neptune.”

Prudence had never snorted anything up nasally in her life. But that was the point of acting, wasn’t it? To get to do things you’d never get a chance to do in real life. She stretched her neck out, pressed one nostril shut with her pointy finger and started snorting like her life depended on it.

“Good,” the Director said. “Okay, can you snort harder but a little slower?”

“Imagine the gas stretching like mozzarella cheese lingering into your nose,” the Writer gave extra direction.

“Ah like thick snot, you mean?” asked Prudence.

“Yes!” The Director gave a firm nod.

 _Wonderful, at least the director speaks Human_ , she thought. At least _one_ of them appeared to be sane. The Director seemed to be the sensible one between the two, hopefully he’ll be the voice of reason.

Meanwhile, it was quite clear which type of “Hollywood crazy” the writer _thought_ he was. You see, in the entertainment world, there existed two strains of crazy: The good creative genius kind of crazy, and then there was the bad kind of crazy that led to all types of harassment, abuse, stalkery, and general creepery—along with all its comorbidities. The former crazies were rare, more common were the second kind (in fact there were plenty).

Oddly enough, Prudence observed, the latter crazy often had harboured delusions of being part of the former group of crazies—which, in reality, was rarely the case. It was an epidemic that had almost become a predictable pattern to Prudence at this point.

Well, this writer appeared to think he might be the former type of cray, although, as far as Prudence could tell, he seemed otherwise harmless, so she decided that she shouldn’t worry about it—for now, although you never know with people. The worst vibe she could get off from him was that air of pretentiousness, and the factual fact that he dressed like a hipster.

The writer wore dainty antique glasses and suspenders. _Suspenders._ Who even wears those anymore? Were they an attempt to make him look all twee and quirky, and ironically just like the rest of the hipster community? _Fucking hipsters._ He looked like the type of guy who would’ve grown a hipster beard, if he could. Unfortunately for him, he also looked like the type of guy who sucked at growing beards.

Prudence hated hipsters more than she hated vegans, but she was desperate for the role.

Prudence had no issue with vegan _food_ , she just despised vegan peo _ple_. In fact, she’d had some pretty delicious vegan _food_ before, and she quite liked it. But then it was at a silent meditation retreat in Bali where you weren’t allowed to speak on the compound. Smart decision on the retreat’s part as most vegans Prudence met were just like most beautiful people; in that they were okay people, until they opened their mouths. As if listening to a sanctimonious lecture by Homo sapiens in-denial of the fact that they are part of the animal kingdom, with their our very own happy designated place in the food chain, would be of any help to her growling stomach. The worst kinds were the ones who forced their poor designed-to-be-carnivorous pets to go vegan too.

To Prudence, humans were the root of all the world’s problems. Humans always ruined the good things in life, she believed. Veg _ans_ spoil veganism, just like celebrity scient _ists_ ruined sci _ence_ by turning it into a cultish new religion. Animal _rights_ was a good cause to support but animal activ _ists_ were a whole other animal that should just go extinct already. It felt to Prudence like humans were trashing life on Earth like rockstars in a hotel room… Which was why, apart from Patrick, she preferred the company of cats.

With vegans, it was easier to manage: Prudence could easily sneak away from them during meal time to she wouldn’t have to eat anywhere near their self-righteous selves. But where does one draw the line with hipsters?

All she had to do was tolerate his hipster-ish insufferability for the short film, she reckoned with herself. They might finish filming in just three days, for all she knew.

“You’re an adult now, Prudence, and adults put up with all sorts of things they dislike making a living because that’s what grown-ups do,” she bargained herself. _Ah, yes, the realities of responsible adulthood... Wretched adulthood hung up on strings, attached to what felt like a nappy, like a piece of wet laundry in front of an ugly neon green sheet._

Prudence looked away to avoid being caught looking at the Writer with such utter disdain. She couldn’t risk her losing her chance to work with him. She then focused her gaze at the neon green screen that hung beside here that was such an eyesore to look at that she wondered what she ever did wrong in a past-life to deserve this torment.

“Okay,” the Director said quietly. Prudence went back into focus. She noticed the Director nod at somebody and instinctively she knew the camera had begun rolling again.

She was to snort the planet and Prudence did as she was told.

Unlike Many actors who never make peace with this fact, Prudence knew her place in this world, she was just a puppet, a pawn. And she accepted that. She wasn’t going to be like the ones who thought they could show up late because they thought they’re above the directors, the writers, the producers, the executive producers, and the people higher up who pay all of the above to make all of the above happen. (Not that Prudence didn’t understand the sentiment. The first time Prudence received a script in which she played the lead role in Jakarta with her character’s name on each and every single page of the screenplay, she knew she had just been handed the power to halt a production simply by not showing up. At least for the day—until they found a replacement.) But having an ego is not helpful in the long-term, Prudence decided. So, she did as she was told. Today she was to snort celestial objects up her nose, and so the celestial objects she snorted.

Obligingly, she whole-heartedly snorted the planets slower this time. This time, she snorted with _intention_. (Everything had to be done with intention, her drama teacher said.)

A second after she let out a small post-snort breath from her mouth, she could hear both the Director and the Writer coo “good” in unison.

“Okay that was _good_ ,” the Writer said, both nodded.

“That _is_ good,” the Director agreed, looking at the roadie in charge of the wires. “Take her down.”

It felt good when they said “good” the first time, but eight “goods” later, Prudence felt desensitised to the positive meaning of the word, she felt the anxiety overcome her once again. And then hearing “take her down” made her heart sink in the most awful way.

“Are we going to read?” Prudence to asked as soon as she felt her forefeet hit the ground.

“Not now, that’s enough for today,” said the Director. “That’s all we need.”

“But I’m off-book?” Prudence offered quietly.

“We just needed to see you snort the planets today,” said the Writer. And then he appeared to be lost in some whimsy thought again.

“Well, just so you know, I _was_ off-book!” She said in an unnecessarily defensive, almost-defiant tone. She probably even looked the Director in the eyes. Prudence had no idea where she found the courage to say that today. Even back home in Jakarta she was the type to wallflower during Producers’ set visits, so she didn’t know where she got the courage from. She was shocked at herself. It was probably the ballsiest thing she’d ever said or done since her plane touched down on a runway at LAX.

“That’s very good,” the Director said professionally. He seemed like he’d already seen worst in actors. “We appreciate that.” Something about the reasonable way he said ‘ _we appreciate that_ ’ humbled her, brought Prudence tumbling straight back into grounded reality, and put her in her place in the puppet box.

“Thank you for having me,” she said softly.

“Thank you for showing up,” said the Director kindly.

They both nodded to each other with a professional mutual respect, but then the writer bowed like a Japanese person for some reason and remained bowed down for about 10 full seconds. As soon as he straightened back up, she turned around and started walking towards the exit, and then waved goodbye to the three roadies and the harness lady who all waved back. And Prudence was out of there. That was the most bizarre audition she’d ever been in.

When she finally got outside, she was confronted by a massive merciless property with lines of warehouses upon warehouses and an endless ‘parking area’ that she had to walk through just to reach the front entrance gate. It felt almost desert-like. Halfway through, she took her backpack out and fished for her glass water tumbler and couldn’t find it.

“Oh, for fuck’s sakes!” she yelled out loud under the LA sun when she realised that her backpack was a little lighter than usual, she must’ve left it at the apartment. Now she’d have to buy herself a drink.

Her thirst was real.

*****

“I hadn’t realised you wanted it _that_ much, Prudence,” Charlotte said.

“Yeah, neither did I,” Prudence said.

“Oh!” Charlotte suddenly remembered something, startling Prudence. “Do you mind if Stuart sits with us?”

“Who?”

“Stuart.” Charlotte answered. “Start Framingham? I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

Prudence nodded although she had no clue who this Start Framingham was. Charlotte made it seem like everyone in town knew who he was and what a big deal he was. She wasn’t sure if she really was supposed know who this guy was; or if everyone in town just knew too much about everyone and everything and _she_ was the normal one.

“We’re meeting here at 12:00 for lunch.”

“Oh,” she said timidly. _Of course, Charlotte wouldn’t meet me here otherwise, she would’ve asked me to come over to her office. I’m just an errand, one of two birds she can kill with the same thought. A random afterthought._

Prudence had gotten so caught up around the thought that Charlotte might drop her today that she hadn’t asked any questions when Bob added an 11:40–12:00 appointment to her Google Calendar late afternoon yesterday.

*

Prudence was on Patrick’s balcony. It was a beautiful time of day on a beautiful day. The leaves rustled in a way she thought only happened on Sunday afternoons. The sunshine was a light orange glow and Prudence couldn’t wait to see if the sky would turn that nice dark pink and light lavender hue later as the Sun set. It rarely did, but when it did, Prudence would usually take a photo. Now, though, as she was playing Prudence, she wanted to challenge herself to live life like she’d in real 1980’s life: she would stare at the sky, with her naked eyes, and appreciate it without snapping a photo to share online. _Could_ she enjoy it without posting it online? She hoped it would be beautiful and especially picture-worthy today, just so she could see how long she’d last without Instagramming it. She was masochistic like that sometimes. She would try not to take a photo even though they were on the balcony having “Balcony Time”.

“Balcony Time” was when their time-out period to unwind on the balcony each day and get to be themselves. And just like in a game of BDSM, ‘balcony’ was their safeword, it was code for the need to break out-of-character. If something was too dire or important and needed to be discussed in-character, they’d head to the balcony, break out-of-character, and walk back into the apartment back in-character.

Patrick had just made a comment on the ‘golden hour’ when Prudence started laughing her ass off, and he asked what she was laughing at. She told Patrick about a random dream she had the previous night where she said something pointless like, “I need to stop confusing the golden hour with the—” Prudence signalled Patrick to come close so she could whisper something that rhymed with ‘hour’ into his ear and they giggled like a pair of children over some immature joke.

“Have you ever done anything like that before?” Patrick asked cautiously.

Prudence looked at him.

“Not judging if you’re into that kind of thing.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I’ve never even vanilla-slept with anyone before… Let alone done anything _that_ kinky,” she arched her eyebrows.

“Really,” he uttered in a way that could only be described as quintessentially British because she couldn’t think of any other accent where ‘really’ could turn out sounding that way. It sounded more like a statement than a question, or a request for confirmation. It was fucking glorious. Then again, when you’re surrounded by Valley girl vocal fry, _everything else_ sounded like the opera.

“Yeah,” she nodded softly.

Patrick had nothing to say to that.

“Best Virgin Actress in a Love Scene in a Short Picture Nominee,” she said in a part-grandiose, part-wistful voice with her eyes squinted in mock seriousness.

Patrick just looked at her, until then her smartphone interrupted them with a little notification noise from inside.

“Let me just check that in case it’s urgent,” she said to Patrick as she left through the balcony’s slide doors. The whole thing was glass from ceiling to floor—Patrick liked having as much light as possible in the apartment, and Prudence liked having as many raindrops trickling on the window as possible. She picked up her phone from the coffee table in the living room, and rushed back to the balcony to show Patrick.

“Oh my God,” she lifted the phone to Patrick’s face, her voice shivered with panic. “She’s totally going to drop me!”

“No, she’s not!” Patrick gave her his _don’t-be-ridiculous_ look.

“Why else would she want to meet me at—?” she tried to read the name of the restaurant “Dorsia?”

“Oh, Dorsia. Yeah, that’s just around the corner,” Patrick pointed east opposite the sunset.

“She usually just has me come over the office!” she sounded increasingly agitated.

“Well, why don’t you just ask Bob?”

“No.”

“Ask him.”

“ _No!_ ”

“Why the hell not, Prudence?”

“Because!” she avoided looking at his face.

Because Prudence was afraid of what she might get for an answer. Because she didn’t want to hear the answer. Prudence looked down so intently, she was hanging her head down dangerously on the balcony.

“Stop that!” Patrick said, tugging her hand and then pulling her inside.

If Charlotte dropped her, there would be no more of these gezellig golden hour moments with Patrick on the balcony when the wind rustled the leaves in that special way that made it feel like a weekend…

Prudence had no trouble sleeping that night. Depression always left her lethargic. It was one of those horrible mornings where she’d wake up with her heart anxiously pounding up her throat and into her ears, and instantly knew something was wrong before she could remember what was wrong with her life. It was the worst way to wake up and Prudence hated it. Then she remembered that she had the meeting with Charlotte this morning. This might just be the day she gets dropped. It was a struggle to get out of bed and get herself ready, however, and she had lost her appetite for any breakfast. Nibbling the Pop-Tart Patrick handed to her, Prudence ruefully wondered if she’d get to see Patrick ever again if she had to leave now.

When Prudence got dressed after her morning show, she decided to wear something nice for once. Since being cast as Prudence, she’d deliberately dress down a little to avoid conjuring a look that looked _too_ nice, one that begged to be memorable. She wanted to dress in a manner which would not compel her to take a mirror selfie or document it on her Instagram stories.

But today, she needed to wear something nice for her meeting with Charlotte. If she was going to be dropped today, at least she wanted to feel dignified when it happened, so she dressed to the nines.

Putting her nice vintage shoes on, she wondered what it _really_ must’ve been like to live in 1981 and to get all dolled-up for a date only for your date and yourself, and perhaps some strangers on the street, to see. Why go through all that trouble if you weren’t going to take a selfie? The insanity of it all: What if you nailed your makeup that day? What if you happened to highlight your nose so perfectly you got the nose you wished you were born with? And not document your hard work on social media for the world to see? What did women do back in 1981, just stare at their makeup artistry all day in the mirror and _then_ wash their faces? What an absurd way to live one’s life.

Still nibbling halfway through the same Pop-Tart Patrick handed her earlier, she said goodbye to Patrick who told her not to worry for what felt like the twenty-ninth time that morning, she sat around in the living room with a mug of black coffee until it was time to leave; just in time professionally on-time, not awkwardly too early but also not tardy.

*

And here she was now, Charlotte was far from dropping her, Prudence had just recieved her first _fancy_ sides.

“You’re welcome to stay. You can join us if you want?” Charlotte offered. “I can introduce you.” Well, this is awkward.

“No!” She looked up at Charlotte and decided maybe she reacted too harshly. “No, I mean, no thanks. I have plans. With Patrick.”

“I’ve got something to do. For—” Prudence wasn’t very good at lying and making excuses. “With Patrick.”

Patrick was at a reading right now, for an adaptation of “American Psycho” and he wouldn’t be home until after 14:00, and Prudence prayed Charlotte wasn’t in the loop about the “American Psycho” reading and filming schedule. It was almost _creepy_ how everyone knew everyone’s business in this town. Prudence _hated_ that about this town. People knew what went on in your life before you learned about it firsthand. Squinting, Prudence wondered what Charlotte knew about her that he didn’t know.

“Ah. Sure,” Charlotte sounded like she wasn’t in the know. “How is he doing as Patrick?”

“Well. He’s good. You know that.” Prudence relaxed a bit after the topic of conversation shifted away from her. _Everyone knows he’s good_ , she thought bitterly. “He’s playing Patrick just the way you’d imagine Patrick Bateman, reading the books.”

“It’s so adorable, the two of you are playing ‘80s New York at the same time…” Charlotte smiled with her oh-that’s-just- _darling_ voice.

She would play Prudence in a stage production of Christopher Durang’s “Beyond Therapy” at some community theatre—as that didn’t require a work permit but counted as a legitimate credit, and he would begin filming a remake of “American Psycho” as a television miniseries as Patrick Bateman. Both characters lived in 1980’s New York. So, they were both “in New York” at the same time, and they came alive as their New York characters simultaneously.

He was scheduled to film interior scenes in a studio in LA the same week Prudence’s play opened and would film exterior shots in New York the following month. Patrick was big enough of a ‘star’ (Prudence _loathed_ that term) to negotiate when to film which scenes, and he’d arranged to be in town during Prudence’s play run so he could see her.

“Has Evelyn given Patrick this script?” Charlotte asked, referring to Evelyn Williams, Patrick’s agent.

“I don’t know. Probably. He gets tons of books,” she murmured. Prudence always begrudgingly calls them “books” because Patrick didn’t get sides to be _hopeful_ about, he got the whole thing to _consider_.

“Well I’m sure Evelyn has. You two would be wonderful together.”

“Hm. I hope so… That would be pretty cool.”

“I remember the time I first met Patr—” Charlotte began recalling the first time she met Patrick.

“You scared me, Charlotte,” Prudence cut her off. “I really thought you were going to drop me! Next time how do I know for certain that you _are_ going to drop—”

“No, don’t worry about that, dear! I wouldn’t. I just needed to hand you these top-secret script,” Charlotte said conspiratorially pointing at the stapled papers in front of Prudence.

“Why didn’t you just call me in to the office like you always do?” Prudence asked again.

“To save you a Lyft ride,” Charlotte reasoned. “Thought I’d hand it to you while I’m in the neighbourhood.” She had a point. The restaurant was just a couple of blocks away from Patrick’s apartment.

“Thank you...” Prudence said quietly. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

Prudence was running out of money and Charlotte was well-aware of the fact. She was on a B1/B2 visa which wasn’t exactly a work permit. It allowed her to have business meetings, negotiate contracts, and have “job interviews” which Prudence ‘lawyered’ to herself constituted what she’d been up to, auditions qualified for that category. It also allowed her to take non-degree classes and participation in unpaid amateur art performances. She wished she could just get a ‘day job’ waitressing like an actress cliché in LA, but she couldn’t _work_ on her B1/B2 visa.

She was technically here ‘for pleasure’. (My hobby is pursuing acting and finding employers who will want me badly enough to arrange for a work permit on my behalf. Apparently upon arrival, I could not find a single one of these supposedly-eager-employers, so I am now broke and epically screwed, thank you very much.)

And her online freelance translation gigs weren’t paying much, they didn’t translate into the cost of living in LA. She was desperate for cash and Prudence wished she could reach out to the Indonesian community as perhaps they would have some translation work for her that they could pay her in cash.

Plus, although Prudence wasn’t get to be homesick, she missed being around Asians who’d actually _lived_ in Asia. Prudence wasn’t sure how she felt about Asian-Americans, all she knew was she needed a break from being around them. She grew tired of hearing them talk about “whitewashing” and killing ‘stereotypes’ (while sounded more like a call to act white) in the same breath. The self-loathing just sounded worse in an American accent. Prudence had a sense that she could never exist and just _be_ without somehow upsetting Asian-Americans. And maybe she _wanted_ to hear something politically-incorrect, maybe she missed the boastful laughter of an offensive joke. Maybe she wanted to talk to people who were just glad to be here.

But Prudence was reluctant to contact them in case the Indonesian community discovered she’d been living with Patrick, as unmarried couples living together were frowned upon. She wasn’t sure how they’d react if she were found out. Especially the elders who she wasn’t sure would accept even a pragmatic financial justification for the arrangement. They’d probably advise her to move out somewhere more affordable and Prudence wouldn’t want to do that, she liked living with Patrick. She liked _Patrick_. And she didn’t like being away from him.

So, she opted for to endure the humiliation of living her barely-unemployed squatter existence just so she could be around him. She knew she was old enough to know better, but she made the conscious decision to be foolish despite it eating up her dignity.

Prudence unzipped the larger bag she had with her that day. She carried around two bags: The vintage monogrammed purse for her 1981 “Beyond Therapy” character and the canvas bag the shape of a cat’s head from 2018. The canvas bag was where she stored her “real-life” modern things; inside the leather purse were her character’s belongings, a compact mirror and comb, some lipstick, a pill box, and a page torn out of an original 1980 copy The New York Review of Books’ personal ads section that he used as a bookmark on a copy of “Notes from Underground” (a book that her character read in the play).

Tidying the insides of her two bags to keep her characters’ headspace organised, she made a mental note to look-up what the term ‘bag lady’ means in English. Or maybe just ask Patrick since she wasn’t supposed to have Internet in 1981. She liked it much better when Patrick explained things to her anyway.

“Well, I better get going now, Charlotte,” she said as folded the script in two so it would fit into her cat-shaped canvas bag. She folded the paper carefully as if folding the copy-proof paper too harshly might ‘harm’ the delicate paper and cause the letters printed on it to fall out and roll on the ground like pearls off a broken necklace. “Have fun with Stuart.”

Prudence wasn’t sure ‘have fun’ was the right thing to say to someone about to have a business lunch, but then it was just one of the many times Prudence wasn’t sure how to carry herself in awkward situations like this.

“Really, you can stay a little longer,” Charlotte insisted. “I’m sure Patrick’s still stuck in traffic somewhere.”

Unlike Patrick, who had an international driver’s permit, Prudence did not. Occasionally Patrick would drive her places in his leased car and drop her off or pick her up places.

“I _really_ better get going.” Prudence said. “Thank you, though.”

“You have been eating, haven’t you?” Charlotte asked as Prudence still-gingerly placed the script into her bag. It was the most precious thing to her at the moment. Prudence looked up, shocked.

“Of course, I have!” Prudence snapped.

“I’m just _checking_ ,” Charlotte said in her motherly way.

“Patrick’s letting me...” Prudence struggled to find a good word to describe their evolving arrangement. For lack of a better term, she finally came up with “couch-surf.”

“Well, that’s very generous of him.”

“It is...” she softly responded as she finally zipped her bag close. She stood up and looked at Charlotte.

“Well you take care.”

“Thank you so much for this,” Prudence patted her 2018 bag.


	3. III

Four months in, and Prudence still couldn’t tell whether First World Los Angeles was really just as filthy as Third World Jakarta; or if perhaps there _was_ a glamorous side of LA, but she just hadn’t had the chance to experience those glamorous parts yet. She hadn’t achieved much since she arrived. Actually, Prudence hadn’t achieved much at all in life in general.

Another thing LA and Jakarta had in common: Prudence didn’t play pedestrian much in neither, which left her feeling like she was constantly at the mercy of others. In Jakarta she relied on the little black Japanese hatchback her parents gifted her as a graduation present. In LA she relied on Lyft rides, lifts from Patrick, and the kindness of people like Charlotte. (It was awfully thoughtful of Charlotte to ask to meet her at a restaurant near the place she was living rent-free to save her a Lyft ride.) But Prudence wanted to stop giving people an excuse to extend their generosity to her. She didn’t want to be the recipient of anyone’s “random act of kindness” project for the day. Her reliance on people’s kindness hadn’t gone unnoticed to Prudence. After all, she still sent Christmas emails to her first few employers from her first office jobs. And she promised herself that she would treat Charlotte and Patrick the same in the future, she would repay their kindness. Whether or not she makes it as an actress.

Rarely did she have a chance to have walks like this, there was always too much going on to on the streets for walks to be “pensive walks” anyway. She wished she could find a park nearby with a pond and a bench to sit on so she could read “Notes from the Underground” instead, but there weren’t any within walking distance. If there was one, she would’ve known about it by now. It was one of the first things she Googled when she and Patrick moved into the area.

Standing in front of window of a hippie-dippy spiritual shop, Prudence looked at the pretty crystals. She’d passed by the shop numerous times as she and Patrick drove by, but she’d never gotten this close. Prudence knew a bit about crystals, and she knew that crystals came in different colours. The ones associated with the Root Chakra tended to be brownish and dark, the Throat Chakras’ crystals were various shades of blue, there were black and dark moss green ones with red speckles, and the royal blue ones with the gold speckles were called lapis lazuli. But the ones the store displayed at their window were all the ones that came in trendy colours: clear pink rose quartz, a particularly light-coloured citrine wand, purple amethysts—the clearest ones they could find, none had the brown “smoke” effect inside them, and some turquoise jewellery. Posed neatly and deliberately under matching dream catchers. _Where do they display the rest of them_ , she wondered? Surely, they sell less attractively-coloured rocks too? Someone's bound to need a fugly bloodstone at some point. Or one of those tiger’s eyes. The pretty pastel ones can’t possibly solve everything for everyone all the time.

The tarot decks at the window were the same, pastel-coloured decks—not the standard kind you’d normally see at the psychic booths, or the type of deck a prop master would’ve chosen for a Hollywood film (just to ensure the audience knew what they were looking at). These ones had gilded metallic edges—gold, silver. They were just as beautifully-drawn as the ones Pamela Colman-Smith had made, but clearly modernised and only those familiar with cartomancy could recognise them as tarot cards. No exposition, just an understanding.

Another thing she discerned. These ones fit that Instagrammable aesthetic. _Everything_ at the shop window did. That nice clean look, straight out of an Instagram flat lay. Down to the small trendy potted plants—mostly in matte white pots, dark green leaves, always wide-leafed, aloe-like, or cactusy. With some dried flowers here and there. Edelweiss? The only thing missing was the white marble table top. She wanted to come in to have a look but opted not to in fear that she might see something she’d want that she couldn’t afford, so she looked away.

_I should have Patrick take a photo of me looking into the window with a Danish and some takeout morning coffee à la Holly Golightly before I leave the city_ , she thought.

Then a little hopeful thought crept in, perhaps if she got that “The Fifth Wall” role, and production arranged for a work permit, that she _wouldn’t_ have to leave. If she could stay longer in LA, maybe she and Patrick could adopt a cat together. They could name it Durian. Prudence had always wanted to name _someone_ Durian. They could raise Durian gender-neutral. They—

_Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, Prudence. You might have to leave._

She was wiser than to get her hopes up. It was almost a ritual by now, a cycle to rinse and repeat: she’d set her eye on a role, auditioned like it could be her big break, and as soon as the audition was over—like any actress wise enough to know better—would let go of all expectations, and forget it ever happened. No agonising over the role, no hoping; out of sight, out of mind. The next time for hurting would be when promotion for the film begins and see somebody else’s face on the poster when it could’ve been you... That was why Prudence avoided walking by cinemas.

Funnily enough, equally agonising was her first experience watching one of her own films in a cinema in Jakarta: her big face with all her pores visible, features she were insecure about augmented and exposed for everyone to see on a big screen. She squirmed in her seat during the entire duration of the film at her first cinema screening. Took her glasses off, so her own face was a blur to her.

_Why am I doing this all to begin with?_

But today was a day of exceptions and she wanted “The Fifth Wall” so much, she _wanted_ to allow herself to feel hopeful. She probably wanted the role more than she wanted to be in “Candy Striper Strange”. As a matter of fact, she wanted this role so badly, she was prepared to break her own one rule for acting in LA: _No nameless characters._ (She would normally never agree to be “Bar Patron 4”, the bar patron would have to have a name. Which is why you never see her as an extra.)

In Indonesia, she had even more rules. She’d had plenty: She would not participate in racist or problematic products was just one of them, then she would walk out of auditions if she wasn’t fond of the classist way writers treated domestic workers, she wouldn’t show up at auditions for commercials for products she didn’t personally use. The list went on and on and on… It was never-ending. The rules didn’t help her career, but they certainly helped _her_.

Her personal casting rules were her one protective shield. In her mind, by setting these rules and boundaries, she made external rejections more palatable. It felt as if _she_ limited herself, then _she_ had some level of control in a system in which she had no power, remnants of control. The world’s rejections then felt like a ‘mutual break-up’ rather than a dumping.

Back in Indonesia, when she’d first started, she’d accept anything she could get within those rules and convinced herself that she wanted it because it was “decent” or “classy enough” until she believed her own lies. But now, for the first time in her life, she’s genuinely wanting these roles. No self-deception necessary. No bargaining with herself. No reasoning other than that she liked them, she genuinely thought “Candy Striper Strange” and especially “The Fifth Wall” were wonderful projects, and just _wanted_ them in a pure way, no lame excuses to help her uncringe. It was so simple in a life where projects were good, and she liked this life. _This must be what it’s like to be Patrick…_

Prudence walked away from the pretty hippie store. Looking back one last time, and then walked away finally. Maybe someday she’ll return and actually come inside. She had other things to focus on right now. Such as today’s happenings.

Prudence couldn’t contain her excitement for “The Fifth Wall” and she couldn’t wait to tell Patrick. Prudence had mastered the art of tweeting so vaguely, that her vague tweets didn’t constitute subtweets. But she felt couldn’t do even _that_ today. Her gut sensed that this script was so big that tweeting something vague might get her in trouble, and it wasn’t worth risking. The itch of being unable to express her excitement through even the vaguest tweet was frustrating. The sensation of being part of a secret and helping to keep it. She could just about explode right now.

She couldn’t seem to tell Patrick over the phone, either. She scanned the street for a payphone but couldn’t locate one and wondered what kind of coins they took or, _how much was required anyway? A quarter?_ She never did carry much change on her since she only used germ-free cashless payments. On the rare occasion that Prudence did pay cash, the change that she would’ve used for a payphone she left behind to go into a tip roundup or ended up in tip jars across LA. Payphones were simply not part of her reality right now.

She pulled out her smartphone and was just about to call Patrick when she saw the screensaver that served as a self-reminder to _limit_ use of her smartphone. It was a photo that Patrick has taken of her in costume which she kept on after a dress rehearsal—it was there to remind her that they were both in the ‘80s and she was not even supposed to be in possession of smartphones. She looked at the screensaver for a bit before putting the smartphone away, the photo was taken from an odd angle in Patrick’s leased car, you could see the cabin’s ceilings. Then realising Patrick would be receiving her call on a slim, sleek smartphone similar to hers, in the middle of his “American Psycho” reading, she decided to wait until they were both home for the day to deliver the news. Prudence felt it wasn’t kosher to call Patrick with a payphone unless he received her call on a brick phone or a car phone (the oldest car Patrick could get his hands on to lease was a newer model too new to have a car phone in it).

Playing a character from the ‘80s was an entirely new skillset for her, it wasn’t just about dressing the part. It was hard enough to focus on living with minimum social media and then on top of that she had _the character_ to play. She had logged out of the Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook apps on her smartphones so the notifications wouldn’t come through. Her smartphone was now just a regular, basic mobile phone that took phone calls, text messages, and received emails. Suddenly Prudence understood the claustrophobia, the disconnectedness, and the isolation of cabin fever. But Prudence didn’t need to understand any of that—Prudence shouldn’t even _care_ , what she did need to understand was what it was like to write for People magazine in 1981 and be single woman placing personal ads, meet up with crackpots in restaurants without waiters, _and_ figure out what motivated her “Beyond Therapy” character to move out from her living arrangement with an ageing preppy named Michael.

The thought of Michael then brought her to thoughts of her real-life 2018 roommate, Patrick. At this very moment, as initial “American Psycho” readings took place, Patrick was probably deep in-character and might berate her for interrupting him with a call. She learned not to take it personally but decided against it. Telling Patrick would _definitely_ have to wait...

She looked at her wrist watch, it was only 12:24 and Patrick wouldn’t be home from his “American Psycho” readings until after 14:00 when it ended. All she could think about how much she needed to unload to Patrick right now. Patrick, who wasn’t on Twitter or Instagram, must be having an easier time dealing with playing his 1980’s character. She almost envied that about him—how just unaffected by it he must be.

Prudence tried to focus on what she knew was a certain in her life right now; her “Beyond Therapy” role. In character, she pulled out her copy of “Notes From Underground” instead, just to check how far she’d gone with reading it. She wasn’t the fastest reader, but she wanted to be finished with the book before the off-book deadline (though in no part of the play is it quoted, just its title cited).

Prudence was off-book already, but she didn’t tell any other members of the cast and still held her script during rehearsals until the director’s official off-book deadline. (She had read in an interview with an English actor somewhere that it was considered vulgar to be off-book far before your castmates. The only person who knew just how far off-book she was Patrick. It was their little secret.)

She had just flicked open the bookmarked page when her stomach grumbled. Apart from the Pop-Tarts that her fidgety-self nibbled for breakfast to appease Patrick who made her eat something, she hadn’t eaten. She didn’t want to wait for him on an empty stomach. _Treating herself at that burger joint a podcast recommended would be a good idea for today_ , she thought. To celebrate her undropping. _Burger cheers to a meeting with your agent at Dorsia that turned out to not be a client-dropping manoeuvre!_

She ordered her burger, curly fries, and glass of Coke (always the largest option for drinks) as if it were takeaway knowing that she would never manage to finish everything in one sitting. The portions were ginormous in America—she always ended up with a doggie bag. She learned that asking for takeaway this was more efficient than eating-in and only to later ask for a doggie bag for food you could eat without cutlery. She figured she saves wait staffs’ time and less dirty dishes for them to wash that way.

It wasn’t very busy; several seats were empty. Prudence knew she could take her time. Across the room from her corner diner booth, sat a party of five at a table for four. The fifth person had to drag a seat from a different table. Not much had to be squeezed in when you’re eating burgers. Three women and two men, the women in office attire pencil skirts and short-sleeved blouses. The men in casual blazers, tieless. The only two facing her were the two men, one medium build, the other heavy set. The latter pulled a piece of bacon out of his burger to eat separately. (Prudence always loved doing the same for pickles—just so she could really taste the pickle’s flavour.)

Prudence placed her canvas sling bag on her lap and protectively placed her elbows on it so as to keep it in place. She took a bite of the end of a curly fry, and took her time eating, occasionally checking on the bag on her lap to ensure that it was still there. Her entire future might be in that bag. She wanted to look at her precious sides but, overcome by irrational fears, such as _what if the wind blows it away_ , even though she was safely inside. Prudence checked again to see that it was still there, safely inside her bag. Today those sides were more important than her own passport.

Prudence overheard someone say that one of the ‘90s supermodels (Prudence couldn’t hear the name of which one) was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering when she was discovered by a scout. Prudence was all ears—she was _obsessed_ with ‘90s supermodels.

The medium-built man said sarcastically with a look of mock horror, “oh, wow imagine _that_ , she could’ve been a high-level exec at Big Oil or Big Pharma by now!”

Prudence giggled under her breathe as she opened her burger bun to pull out a sliced pickle. Super _modelling_ equals world peace. Fucking hilarious. Real life equations _were_ always much more interesting than the bland ones they taught in school... As she put the pickle in her mouth, a visibly awkward momentary silence fell upon the table until one of the women, with a most insincere tone of vocal “outrage”, sanctimonious shamed him for the joke and lectured him about how he “should be supporting women in STEM”.

The bacon man said, “calm your tits, Amnesty. He was just kidding… No need to get your panties in a bunch.”

_Bahaha, he just called her ‘Amnesty’_ , Prudence smiled. _And shouldn’t Amnesty be more appalled by Big Pharma’s crimes anyway? What a disturbingly clueless woman._

“What do _you_ know about women?” she said dismissively. “You still live in your _mom’s basement_.”

Prudence wanted crumple her dirty napkin into a ball and throw at the back of her head for ruining a perfectly good, mostly-inoffensive joke. And a satisfying one at that. The group of five lunchers looked to be around the ages between late 30’s and early 40’s. They can’t _possibly_ still believe that _all_ scientists develop HIV vaccines and cure cancer? Dumbasses.

It wasn’t even _that_ sexist. Was it even sexist _at all_? Prudence considered it. It rather reminded her of a gender-flipped conversation she had with her friends in grad school one day before class, about a hypothetical world in which Hitler had remained a painter. Prudence had Google Imaged Hitler’s paintings before—they weren’t bad at all. Now all of the sudden, when the subject of conversation is a woman, people get mad? Prudence shook her head, _how the fuck did feminism go from striving for equality to nonsensical double-standards? Hell, now it’s considered ‘empowered’ to imitate the dick-ish behaviour of asshole-ish men. WTF?_

Prudence caught the funny man’s eye to make sympathetic eye-contact, smiled through her eyes, pursed a naughty smile at him. His eye twinkled back at Prudence. A kindred spirit.

Life had taught Prudence to be wary of people who were _that_ opinionated and _that_ outspoken. (After all, this _was_ LA, and activism was but another way to gain fame these days.) From her experience working and interacting with American expats in Jakarta, she knew both political parties consisted of assholes. Prudence never outright asked but made an educated guess: if liberals were more well-travelled and more open to working overseas in secular do-gooder fields, then it was more likely that the Americans she’d interacted with throughout her life were mostly liberals—including the ones she overheard rudely complaining at the Tokyo subway or the loud ones at Bali’s airport. America would get over their bipartisan drama once they realise the rest of the world don’t see parties, they just see _assholes_. ( _But that noooone of my business…_ ) She concluded that liberals were just as bigoted and racist as conservatives, but they were better at hiding their bigotry under the guise of political-correctness. And this wannabe “progressive” self-appointed Patron Saint of Women in STEM was no probably exception. If St. STEM’s mask ever cracked, she’d be uglier than the average person underneath. What exactly _was_ the point of political-correctness when it’s just used to mask closeted bigotry, and only made life less funny?

Prudence wished she was at that table with the two funny men. She would’ve thrown more fuel to the fire, “anyone know whether you can make nuclear bombs or WMDs with a degree in Chemical Engineering?” she’d ask. Prudence’s closed her eyes and held what would’ve been another big cackle under her breath that caused her shoulder and back to tense up. _Ugh, never mind you’d probably need a degree in physics to make nuclear bombs..._

She suddenly missed the feeling of having a mushroom cloud explode on her brain stem. When was the last time she had that? She closed her eyes and entered a meditative state with a ginormous bacon burger still in her hands…

When she opened her eyes; the group had gone. The clock at the diner said 14:55. Wrapping what was left of her American-sized burger meal, she got up and left the burger joint.

Slurping what was left of the supersized Coke that she took with her from the burger joint, Prudence felt a certain kind of sadness. She tried to recall the last time she felt this familiarly unpleasant feeling. It was like a longing for something that was already there, and then she remembered she felt this way on her last week in Europe, after graduation, when it was time to go.

Ten years from now would she develop the same resentment toward LA that she now had for grad school? Probably. Prudence knew herself far too well. She turned on _everyone_ eventually, with no exception. It was a pattern, probably some undiagnosed personality disorder… She’d only remember the utterly terrible memories of LA, and then choose one aspect of her LA experience to romanticise. She predicted Patrick might remain on his pedestal and she’d remember _him_ fondly. Maybe even idolise him and watch every film he’d cast in to remember the days they spent together, be his biggest fangirl and collect every DVD of every one of his, maybe see him at her favourite cinema in Jakarta blending in with strangers who would never know just how much prettier Patrick is in person—because damn those high-res cameras are _cruel_. Bite her lip to prevent herself from blurting, _he’s so much prettier in real life, you know!_ But only maybe. Maybe he’d break her heart a year or two from now and she’d end up hating him. You never know with people.

_And this is why they tell you to live in the present and stop worrying about the future, Prudence,_ she reminded herself, only to be reminded of her future again. She had to make _this_ future work before her six months were up. If not, she’d have to return to Jakarta.

_No_ , again she was overcome with anxiety. _No fucking way am I going back there_ , she thought to herself. She just could _not_. Not back into that and the hoops she’d have to jump through. The old life where being in a skin-whitening cream commercial was the way to get your foot in the door and being westernised was a sure way to get ahead quickly. A world of casual promotion of colonialist ideas and glorifications western culture. Only it was a western civilisation and mannerisms imagined seen _through Indonesian eyes_. What these Indonesian works portrayed were off-mark. A far cry from real Anglo-European life, they were made into some sort of distorted notion and ideal of what of what American and European _supposedly_ thought processes, lifestyles, and tastes were. And it was nothing like the reality of Europe or America, it was a knock-off of it. It was skin whitening creams, Instagram shots of shopping sprees abroad, the awkward mixing and shoehorning of English words into Indonesian sentences, and fake accents with exaggerated R’s. It was all _so tacky_ but that was what Prudence was forced to see every time she turned on the mirror that was Indonesian TV. It was like a bizarre reversed-Orientalism where _westerners_ were the ones being exoticised.

The worst thing about it was the well-travelled, foreign-educated class promoted it as they benefited and profited from keeping the idea of this westernised lifestyle aspirational to the majority. And the Indonesians who did not promote it promoted a self-inflicted Orientalist viewpoint that romaticise themselves.

She gasped out loud and stopped in her tracks in front of a palm reader shop’s bright neon lights. She cursed herself for doing that—reacting visibly to her inner-emotions. She peered into the palm reader’s shop window and saw nothing, it was pitch black inside. The neon light was left on in broad daylight, one shaped like a crystal ball and another shaped like a Hamsa. She couldn’t see her reflection in the shop window as it took in all the colours of the neon lights.

Prudence tried to shove the thought back into the darkest compartment at the very back of her head. It gave her second-hand embarrassment, and shame was her least favourite emotion—she found it just _unbearable_. The thought of her having to return to that _life_ was unbearable. She’d become a recluse if it ever came to that. Yes, that’s what she would do. Be a recluse and take only work-from-home jobs.

She wanted to be an actress _here_. From scratch, in a neutralised playing field. Prudence was determined to make Hollywood her Switzerland. _This_ was where she wanted to be, where butt-ugly Asians got to be on TV.

Suddenly she didn’t care if she were trapped in a room of angry Asian-Americans. Just as long as she didn’t have to do those horrificly tacky ads that looked like a communist propaganda poster for western civilisation…

What would her old law professors think of that? She stopped in her tracks—again, acting out what should be innermost private thoughts. She shook her head and continued walking, _why do I still seek approval from her old law school professors?_ They should be irrelevant. She shouldn’t care. But she felt that pang in her heart every time thoughts and memories of grad school came back to her. A mix of shame, regret, and sprinkled with a sense of panic at the lack of her career’s progress as time went by…

At least her tuition was paid for with family money (she never _was_ bright enough to win a scholarship). Sure, that probably meant she owed _her parents_ , but it wasn’t her fault that she existed now, was it? She dreaded the thought of having to owe a European Union member state’s government in _that_ way. What sort of neo-colonialism would _that_ have been? Her acting classes in LA were paid for with the savings she had saved up for this effort, there was something deeply satisfying about it.

The only fond memory she had of grad school was their class trip to the WFP and the ICRC in Geneva, and the day trip to Lausanne. Prudence only enrolled into that programme because she was the black sheep of her family, only to find that she became the black sheep of the class. Not exactly a model student. And not only were the standards higher, she got caught up in the excitement of the living on her own for the first time—albeit a dorm lifestyle rather than a fully-adult life, the partying, the freedom. Outside her dorm, however, the rest of the student town appeared to live in ivory towers, and everybody was a Frasier Crane or a Niles Crane. Perhaps she wasn’t well-suited for academia, perhaps she wasn’t imagining it the looks of contempt her low-brow self got.

If that day ever came, when she got her big break, she knew, _someone_ would come out of the woodworks—most likely that fellow Indonesian dormmate who hated her guts, or even a lecturer who felt she’d wasted his valuable high-minded energy and time—and spill to a tabloid what a horrible, dumb, lazy, spoiled student she was. They’d have so much dirt on her. Part of her feared success for this reason, part of feared failure for the very same reason.

The misery didn’t stop at graduation. They’d started inviting her to alumni events in Jakarta. And Prudence, being the people pleaser she is, kept RSVP-ing yeses. It was supposed to be an honour to be invited but she always drove home feeling degraded. And judged.

The only decent people there were the alumni event’s organisers (who, naturally, loved Prudence because she always went out of her way to show-up—Prudence would submit work assignments before deadlines just so she could make it to the events they’d put a so much effort into putting together). By the time Prudence finally decided to stop attending them altogether, she’d realised she only came to please the event organisers who were kind to her.

Sometimes Prudence would volunteer as an alumna to counsel prospective grad students, but when the applicants saw she was younger than them, they would torment her. Especially male prospective students. (They were just a step away from telling her to go back into the kitchen and demand she make them a sandwich.)

The networking events were nothing but gigantic pissing contests to see who'd made a bigger splash in life and boy did it stink of piss…

“I’m a Prime Minister now,” one alumnus said smugly. ( _Fuck you so much, Sir._ )

Sometimes she couldn’t stand just how _stupid_ these educated people were.

She _loathed_ those alumni events.

They always made her feel like an egg. Especially around her face, as if her face was made of eggshell. It felt as though if she stopped smiling that professional smile as they put a business card in her hands and acted uninterested when she offered a card back in return (she didn’t start it) out of politeness, her face would crack and shatter all over the ballroom floor. She’d keep smiling because she knew if she let them get to her or let it show, they’d just trample on her.

Usually, though, before that had a chance to happen, she’d approach the host or event organisers to thank them for having her (just as she was taught in charm school) then bid them adieu, rush herself into her car, and throw herself into the driver’s seat of her car and let out a dramatic sigh of relief you’d think only characters in Hollywood films do. The hammiest of hammy real-life sighs you could think of. Just to breathe out all the charm school postures and lessons out of her system, melt back into the happy underachieving puddle that was Prudence, and drive away with some relaxing lyricless music—the only type of music she could drive with without getting too distracted.

Whenever she saw fellow alumni at outdoor parking lots outside alumni events, she’d either avoid eye-contact or slump her petite body down in her driver’s seat of her equally tiny Japanese hatchback to duck and hide. It was even easier for her to disappear if they were in a dark parking garage at some hotel or building. Sometimes, though, someone would catch her and ask for a ride. She hated having people ride with her, robbing her of space to recharge. If they got entitled or fussy and asked for “entertainment”, she would punish them by playing “Canto Ostinato”, Simeon ten Holt’s hours-long piano piece, which she always found soothing—but apparently drove all her passengers nuts. That should teach them. Prudence did have a vengeful streak to her, she wanted everybody to pay.

From the actress who recorded a video of her _allegedly_ not being off-book a fortnight before opening night ( _I was thrown off from being recorded by the intruder but had been off-book since the auditions_ , she’d say to set the record straight) to all the alumni snobs who looked down their noses at her to the white-collar criminals who cockblocked her aid work career because she had progressed too fast and got promoted too soon.

She wished she were driven by more noble urges, but all she just wanted at this point in life was to be so important and so successful that every single asshole who’d ever wronged her would look at her and think, “fuck, I pissed off the wrong girl.”

She wanted them all to regret it, and really _feel_ the _sting_.

*

In LA, being around people still sucked the life out of her, but at least she didn’t have to wear the delicate eggshell mask around _actors_. If _actors_ looked down at her at least she knew it was because they were dumb and superficial. Part of her secretly _enjoyed_ the shallowness, the stupidity, the fad diets, the appropriation and adoption of eastern philosophies— _and_ the fact that some of them couldn’t even pronounce things right, the salacious gossip (even if she never cared who the subjects were, or remember their names—she preferred blind items as it felt like reading case study segments off “Abnormal Psychology” to her, sometimes she’d learn which rapey and dangerous Hollywood creeps to stay away from in the process).

The only thing that really pissed her off about LA was the sound of ignorance in the voices of executives talking about “tap into Chinese market this, Chinese market potential that” although Prudence herself didn’t know what it meant. She rarely rubbed elbows with people who spoke like that and already it rubbed her the wrong way. A little bit. And if it was a nuisance now, it could only annoy her even more in the future. Eventually. Even she herself knew that it was only a matter of time before she got fed up with LA too. She already knew she wouldn’t live here long-term—she did prefer _football_ over ‘football’. But for now, it was fine. She prefers this life over her old life, so she should shut up and suck it up … For now. Until it was time for her to move on to a next life to attempt tolerating. Sometimes she felt like a con woman hopping from life to life in real life.

Prudence likened her failures on top of all the privileges and advantages that she’d had in life to having an eating disorder in an impoverished country; you knew you were sick from an addiction to self-control that you had no control of, but you couldn’t help but feel guilty and selfish when every time you stepped out of your favourite Jakarta mall, and all you saw was the struggles of unpolished poverty.

It was easier to look at the poor people inside the mall where they wore security guard uniforms, shop assistants polished in the same shade of lipstick, trained to draw their eyeliners in the same style, hair full of product pulled tightly into a bun, and all speaking the same scripted standard-operating-procedure service industry lines. But outside the mall, on the streets of Jakarta, they were themselves. Waiting for their buses or motorbike taxis and whatnot to transport them home after a shift.

She always wondered, what went through their minds as they cleared the plates with half-eaten beef steaks because someone had decided they wanted to fit into a dress that cost twice their monthly wages? (She _hoped_ they weren’t concerning themselves with cow farts. She hoped they had enough food to feed their children at home.) She always wondered where they lived and what their houses must look like? They probably don’t have air-conditioning. What kind of people were they off-duty? Did they have affairs? Were they manipulative? Were they selfish? Were they introverts? The same things you’d wonder about the actors you saw on television, just with no tabloids or gossip blogs to fill you in on the tea.

And now, desperate in LA, after enjoying all the advantages that those waiters and cleaners and concierges never had, Prudence was on the brink of taking _their_ roles. _Their_ jobs. _Their_ turf. She knew she had no right.

_I’ve just arrived at yesterday_ , was her first thought as the wheels of her plane touched down on a runway at LAX. LA _was_ 14 hours behind Jakarta. Though she was sure she’d just Benjamin Buttoned her life way further back than that.

*

Most of Prudence’s peers from her international law programmes had made peace with the fact that international law jobs were scarce and not everybody got to make a name of themselves solving world hunger and were happy to just namelessly make a living for their dependants walking in and out of private law firms or settled with corporate jobs that _didn’t_ make the world a better place. Prudence observed they acted like it was choice built on ambition rather than resignation—and perhaps it was their truth. But Prudence wanted more than that and now she was _this_ close to robbing the jobs of the very people should be helping and protecting. She’d make the kind of unsympathetic protagonist people would love to hate.

She wished she could be like that, she wished she wasn’t so narcissistic and thirsty for recognition. She wished she could be okay with wearing a uniform too and be just like everybody else. But Prudence wasn’t satisfied with being just another pedestrian at Shibuya Crossing, she needed to be the Hatchikō statue at Shibuya Station.

Now she wasn’t even a “struggling actress” or “starving artist”, now she just felt _despicable_.

“Reasoning myself into coming to LA on a B1/B2 visa is the only time my legal training was of any use to me...” Prudence always joked.

To which Patrick answered, “well, I’m glad you did it.”

Patrick of course would’ve also consoled with her. Told her that it was perfectly normal for the middle class to do some waitressing in LA, that service jobs weren’t reserved for those who “needed it the most” because she fell into that category here, that Prudence wasn’t stealing from anyone. A conversation that never happened thanks to her not-so-work-permit visa situation making it an impossible scenario not worth discussion. Prudence wished she had a work permit just so Patrick could reassure her, she needed him to. She needed Patrick to say it out loud to her in his voice and physically touch her in some way to make the reassurance feel real, like it wasn’t some sort of a dream.

Prudence was grateful, however, for being a real person instead of fictional character. She knew she’d wouldn’t be much of likable character… Growing up, her nannies would watch Mexican telenovelas—dubbed in Indonesian language—while they looked after her. It was a world of completely innocent protagonists with hearts of gold, where rich people had a predisposition for evil, and the black-hearted antagonists had no redeeming qualities. People were either good or bad, nobody lived in a grey area. Life was simple, and everybody knew who to root for.

Right now, she felt like a telenovela villain in real-life and even _she_ couldn’t root for herself. Even as she knew, technically, she wasn’t actively inflicting harm on anyone. At least not intentionally. She certainly was no Soraya Montenegro, but she’d always sensed that she drew out of people the same sentiments Soraya did. Sometimes Prudence wondered why she became an actress knowing how unlikable she comes off, she’d witnessed people literally scowl at her presence. Perhaps she hoped people would like her better in character. Or she was just deluding herself by thinking so.

She’d attended European grad school, finishing school… And yet in spite of all those advantages she’s had in life, she still somehow managed to make nothing out of her life.

Prudence just so naturally fell into the lifepath of ending up in stuffy alumni events that she couldn’t claim law school and grad school were “a mistake”. It was expected of her and that’s what naturally had occurred. She had no defense for it.

 

The charm school naturally happened too, but maybe that wasn’t as bad, it felt more like an acting school than anything else. They taught pupils how to play a role of refinement for the real world. Her parents enrolled her into a “life-time membership” programme at the finishing school. It was an arrangement whereby she could come in anytime for ‘coaching’. The only time she used the perk was when she needed some coaching to deliver a speech at some dinner party at a foreign ambassador’s residence. She felt like a fraud when people approached her afterwards, with their inspecting eyes, asking her what she did for a living as if _that_ was what defined her value. It was the last alumni event she’d ever attend. It was also a performance. All of it. Every single time it was. Prudence figured if she had to live a life of chronic performing, she might as well get fucking paid for it. She felt better suited for a profession in which she became other people.

“As a matter of fact,” Prudence told Patrick one day. “That’s where I got this.”

She produced a small zip-lock folder from which she pulled out an A4-sized paper folded in four. Patrick took it from her hands and unfolded it.

“Tongue-twisters?” Patrick mumbled as soon as he recognised what he was looking at, an A-to-Z set of English tongue-twisters.

“Mm-mmh.”

“So, I figured... I might as well go full on with it... Right?”

Patrick wondered if there were Indonesian tongue-twisters too, but he didn’t ask. There were more interesting things he wanted to ask his new friend, such as, why didn’t she have an accent? And was her lack of accent learned? Did she learn it at the charm school too? Patrick was fascinated by her.

She hadn’t just hopped off a Greyhound from another state, she came out of a Boeing 767 from a country with a name he hadn’t said out loud since his geography lessons in primary school. She wasn’t even from a Commonwealth country, but a former Dutch colony. They teach English there as a second language, she informed him. She said she didn’t speak Dutch because the grammar was “all wonky” in that language.

She may have _seemed_ to him like another ‘runway’ but she wasn’t _rebellious_ by any means. Far from it. In fact, she looked like she belonged in a cubicle somewhere, Patrick observed. Not “prim”, but just “office-worker-like,” was how he labelled her when they first met. But even for an office worker she seemed particularly official and high-strung.

People like her were dime a dozen in the industry. Of course, not everybody was running away from something—Patrick with his formal drama school education was here chasing rather than running away. But of all the runways in LA, he chose to befriend her. At least _she_ didn’t appear to have been plucked straight out of a film noir. Not this one. No shady past, nothing terribly dark or _real_ to run away from, and she’d run away from a serious career to boot.

To Patrick at least, she seemed to have a pretty sweet life going on for her before this, she also appeared to be self-aware enough to know that she was throwing away a good thing. She told him a story about how she was offered an internship with the United Nations on-the-spot at one alumni event. Patrick knew nothing about international relations and even he knew that it must’ve been a coveted internship. He wondered—what, then, was she doing _here_? Was she just bored? Lost? Confused? Patrick wondered why she’d throw that all away—was she _bad_ at it? Was she _lying_ to him about her past? Why she would she be lying about who she was? And what could she be hiding?

_What am I now_ _an Indonesian psycho trying to live out a warped American dream?_

“You must think I’m a horrible person,” she continued. “I should be saving the world and making it a better place and here I am, in questionably legal grey area, in LA trying to become an actress.”

Patrick shook his head, “I don’t.”

Prudence look at him, he sounded truthful enough. He had a reassuring accent that could make the dreadful sound _a little less_ dreadful; the same accent the voice-over narrator from “Air Crash Investigation” had, the kind of voice you’d want to hear on an Agatha Christie audiobook.

To Prudence, Patrick resembled her old law school peers who stayed in their lanes to pursue a career in their respective fields. But it wasn’t that uncomfortable familiarity that drew her to him. It was the sense of stability and consistency and predictability that he carried with him. Unlike her, he wasn’t flighty, he seemed dependable, responsible, accountable. He went to drama school, and he followed through.

Patrick was order and Prudence was chaos. Yet there was a method to her life’s madness that Patrick wasn’t sure Prudence herself realised was in place. For instance, any Shakespeare play Prudence thought “sucked” was always coincidentally one of comedies, and the ones she said she “liked” always _just happened to be_ one of the tragedies. She seemed genuinely baffled when he pointed this out to her.

Patrick knew she wasn’t kidding when she told him that she “knew nothing about acting”; when he named his impressive drama school alma mater, and all she had to say in response was, “so, if you’re from England, have you met the Spice Girls?”

“No, I haven’t met the Spice Girls,” he graciously answered matter-of-factly. Not a hint of being offended that she had no clue that she was supposed to be impressed by his education.

She had come to LA with no training. She proudly showed him a printed-out “The Glass Menagerie” script and said, “look, I’m in an acting class too! This is my homework... The teacher assigned me to—”

“Laura?” Patrick guessed. She wasn’t really built like a commercial actress, but Patrick then again had no idea what a typical actress was supposed to look like in Indonesia.

Prudence nodded. _How did he know the teacher wanted me to play Laura_ , she wondered?

He wondered what casting type was she back in her home country? Would she be considered conventionally beautiful, attractive? Having been in the business of being judged by his looks for so long, Patrick had almost lost the ability to judge physical appearances unless it was through the eyes and approval of others. He found comfort in not knowing what he was looking at. It happened like a brain-washing, a gradual desensitisation, the loss of function of his senses, and finally those near-mathematical rigid terms he’d lived by left him with an inability to form fluid opinions (there were only three variables to choose from now: beautiful, _jolie laide_ , ugly). Now he spoke the language of accolades. If a film was awards-nominated, then it was good. If not, it was therefore mediocre. If a screenplay stated that the character played by an actress his opposite was pretty, she then was pretty in his eyes too.

With Prudence, he couldn’t asses what he was looking at. His brain registered her odd features but didn’t know what to make of them. All he knew he was that she had unusual features, but he couldn’t assess whether they were a good thing or a bad thing. She wasn’t repulsive and nothing about her appearance offended his sensibilities, it was just she—

“Hey,” Prudence snapped him out of his inconclusive assessment of her looks. “If I downplayed Laura Wingfield’s limp, do you think that would be a mindfuck for the audience?”

She smiled mischievously with her eyes widened. He studied those eyes, later he found out the unusual shape of her eyelids were due to her “Epicanthal folds”, which Patrick never learned whether or not they were considered attractive by the standards of her culture since it was probably too taboo and too politically-incorrect to discuss on the English-speaking corners of the Internet.

Patrick made a solemn decision that day to never ask her about her looks, he kind of liked not knowing what he was looking at. He liked that _a lot_. It was comforting to _not_ know whether someone was attractive or unattractive. It was the comfort of unfamiliarity, a novelty. Patrick wanted to preserve the newness it brought into his life. So never allowed himself to make his own judgments. We wanted to keep Prudence so foreign to him that she became immeasurable, too strange to gauge. Just as she failed to recognise the apparently-prestigious drama school in England that he had once attended.

It was only a few weeks later in that very class Prudence attended in LA, and a week after they became roommates that Prudence learned just how prestigious the drama school Patrick had graduated from was.

Patrick picked her up from class that day as usual, dressed as if he drove all the way from Wall Street. She squirmed in shame in the passenger’s seat of Patrick’s leased car as he drove home with her and felt a blanket of insecurity overcome her. Looking out of the window with a look of uncertainty during the whole drive home, too ashamed look at him, let alone speak to him. Patrick was too busy being annoyed with the LA’s rush hour to notice.

After she had gotten over the initial shame and avoidance, she took comfort in the fact that Patrick didn’t take offense in her lack of familiarity with his alma mater, he hadn’t flown off the handle with elitism. He’d always struck her as someone who would’ve snubbed her for her lack of sophistication, but now she’d learned how unsophisticated she truly was and also just how wrong she was about him. She hated being wrong. But at least she knew he could be trusted. She developed a newfound respect for him. He was safe for her.

*****

Patrick had noticed how rattled she’d became when a shop attendant carded her at the liquor store the day they went shopping for their housewarming party. Prudence, who didn’t care for the “fermented grape juice” Patrick made a point of consuming and tasting while in California, dropped by to grab a bottle of Baileys for herself or anyone else who’d want some at that the party Patrick threw.

Sometimes over breakfast or in the laundry room, she’d tell Patrick, “if I ever get in trouble for this,” with ‘this’ being auditioning on a B1/B2 visa, “I’d argue...” this and that.

Patrick wasn’t sure how her semantic arguments would actually hold up in court, but he let her ramble on as he could tell she was reciting them only to reassure herself that everything would be fine more than anything else. Patrick thought she sounded more like a linguist than a litigation lawyer. By the end of their third week of cohabitation, Patrick had memorised her all legal reasoning word per word. He knew every single point of emphasis by heart.

Patrick doubted Prudence had anything to worry about, but the problem with Prudence was that unless something is spelled out very clearly, or downright bluntly, she’d either agonise over it or she completely missed it. Everything had to be literal or blatant with her. In this case, since the State Department’s website never explicitly stated it was okay to “audition” on a B1/B2 visa, just that you could “interview” or have “business negotiations”, Prudence worried sick. She’d printed out a webpage from the State Department’s website detailing what a B1/B2 visa entailed and coloured the printout with highlighter and little scribbled notes on the borders in her godawful illegible handwriting. She placed them neatly stacked on the corner of the dining table to review every breakfast.

She was in constant need of reassurance, and he could provide none, so he just listened on quietly to her high-pitched voice—which no doubt would sound twice as high-pitched in a courtroom—rehearse her “arguments” to herself. He wished he could help but had nothing helpful to add, no legal advice to offer. He had none of the answers. He’d never met anyone who came here on a B1/B2 visa before. He’d never met anybody like her at all before.

*****

Prudence noticed that her roommate lived a completely different world as she did. Patrick lived in a world where he seemingly had no real friends. The ones Patrick introduced to her as his “good friends” from England didn’t seem much like friends at all, and “good” was the last thing Prudence would describe the two as being.

Two individuals he considered his “friends” from England came to visit one week, a man and a woman, who appeared unannounced at their apartment door one late afternoon. Patrick broke out-of-character and introduced Prudence as his roommate, and they ordered some Uber Eats for dinner.

Patrick’s introduction of herself as his “roommate” wasn’t quite accurate, either. A more honest introduction would’ve sounded something like, “this is the Indonesian freeloader who’s been living in my apartment rent-free for the past two months, her legal status is questionable, she acts like the Wi-Fi is just there like it’s some kind of birth right and doesn’t seem to realise it comes with a bill, she also regularly steals my food. The only things she doesn’t steal from me are chilli sauce—because I don’t have any—and coffee, she takes hers black. And when she’s not eating my yogurt or blackberries, she scrapes thin layers of my ice cream in the freezer on a daily basis. She thinks I don’t notice. But I do.”

She guessed Patrick’s description of these “good friends” were a similarly sugar-coated and grossly inaccurate.

Both were overly keen, but the Male Friend seemed terribly interested in Patrick—around Patrick, he existed and breathed almost as if in a constant state of lamenting the wombless gender he was born into in this lifetime or, to a lesser extent, as if he regretted his heterosexuality. Prudence had never seen a man so desperate to be permanently-associated with another man in her life. (Prudence felt compelled to remind him not to poke holes in the condom.) He spoke in a disturbing mix of aw-shucks faux-humility and grandiosity which left Prudence confused and unable to make any conclusion about his character other than “this man is profoundly untrustworthy”. As for the Female Friend, Prudence just _couldn’t_ with her. The Female Friend spoke in such extremes, it felt as if she were one half of a power couple waiting for her other half to show up and unload the burden of all her big words and her grand gestures (and in her mind, it seemed, she’d already decided, Patrick was the other half of the deal). She always had a look of _hunger_ about her—a certain kind of figurative hunger, and sometimes when Patrick entered the room her face would light up a calculating way that brought chills to Prudence’s spine. It wasn’t a look of love, it wasn’t a crush, it felt almost _predatory_. Both made Prudence’s skin crawl.

Yet these were who Patrick considered his “dear friends”, his inner-circle. With friends like this, Prudence questioned whether she truly knew Patrick. If you are the company you keep, then, were these people a reflection of who he was, a facet of him he hadn’t accurately introduced to her yet? Who exactly was she living with?

The Female Friend went through great lengths to ensure that her order was ‘veganised’ although they were not ordering from a vegan restaurant and Patrick, whose Uber Eats account they used to order dinner, catered to her whims, typing in all her extra instructions into the app’s delivery notes as she _dictated them_ to him. She probably thought that made her empowered. (Prudence prayed everyone in the delivery chain from the line cooks to the chefs to the Uber Eats driver spit in her food.)

_Why_ she couldn’t just download the damn app and order her own dinner separately from an _actual vegan restaurant_ instead of pestering the kitchen staff of a non-vegan restaurant, Prudence could not fathom. As far as Prudence knew, her special diet had nothing to do with health concerns or her system of belief. It felt _pathological_. For someone who supposedly altered her entire diet “for the greater environmental good” (as she put it in her own words) she exhibited a near-narcissistic level of self-importance and self-entitlement.

As Prudence was left busy in her own thoughts—wondering what kind of upbringing might breed assholery if such epic proportions, Patrick, who’d remained broken out-of-character (who would never take that shit from anyone) for his guests, just foolishly obliged. Prudence was the lone fictional character in that room, and probably the only sane one left.

Dinner with Patrick’s friends began unfolding into a surreal experience. It was like watching _fucking Tumblr_ come to life (in the worst possible way). And as if Prudence wasn’t uncomfortable enough already, she caught the Female Friend’s face contort with hatred. What the hell did Prudence just _see_? She couldn’t _unsee_ it.

The more Prudence listened to The Female Friend speak, the more Prudence understood why her face contorted the way it did when Patrick introduced Prudence as being from Indonesia, and not Asian-American, despite her lack of a native accent. At first, Prudence took it as racism, disgust at her being. But as The Female Friend’s proclamations of social justice grew bigger and bigger with attempts at being _edgy_ as the evening progressed, Prudence wondered was she... _envious_? Of her _dis_ advantages in life? It was almost as if the Female Friend _wanted_ to have Martyr complex but lacked the symptoms.

The Female Friend kept eyeing Prudence. Brainstorming a much-needed new angle, an _edge_ to stand out. The suffragettes had their way and both World Wars put women in the workforce—soon we’d have equal pay too, and now it wasn’t enough to be just a woman in a decreasingly-patriarchal society. Times were changing and being a woman simply was no longer enough to establish “victim cred” for an SJW as the world became an increasingly better place. She needed _relevance_. And how was she to compete with people like Prudence as people like her become more and more visible? How was she to compete for attention against other women with trendier, edgier, justifiably-angrier skin colours? (Both friends were Caucasian, as far as Prudence could tell.) _Her_ grandparents were never colonised. So then, what _could_ her unique selling point be? She wanted firsthand experiences to moan about, not second-hand faux outrage.

When the Female Friend quickly straightened out her facial contortions, she looked Prudence in the eye with a softer expression, and leaned over to compliment her nail polish, Prudence couldn’t help but feel a little gaslit. Did the Female Friend really contort her face in deep hatred, or it was it imagined? She _did_ just say, “I absolutely loooove your nail polish.”

“Thank you,” Prudence murmurs. _Did Patrick notice that flash of hatred?_ Or was it just her insecurity talking? She glances at Patrick, he seems either completely oblivious to the occurrence on the Female Friend’s face, unbothered by it—or keeping his reaction hidden?

“Ugh, love, love, love,” The Female Friend continued faux-fawning at her nail polish. It felt so fake, being on the receiving end of it was a discomfort. Prudence felt the urge to curl her fingers in. “You know what I _don’t_ love?”

Prudence _didn’t_ want to know, and Patrick—who was in the middle of chewing his dinner—was in no position to contribute to the conversation with his mouth full. So, The Male Friend, volunteered to feed the beast by offering her an irritating “what?”

“The term ‘beauty guru’,” she began, then with a lightness in her voice meant to sound intellectual added, “it’s un _woke_ how these YouTubers are calling themselves ‘beauty gurus’! Do they know what ‘guru’ means? Gurus are spiritual teachers in the Dharmic faiths...”

Prudence wanted to push her off her high-horse and tell her that “guru” is the generic Sanskrit-derived Indo-Malay loan word for _any_ kind of teacher—including the Indonesia acting teacher in who had sexually harassed her, so there was nothing offensive about YouTubers referring to themselves as such. What _was_ offensive was her astounding ignorance of languages and cultures outside of her Anglocentric world. Prudence hoped the Female Friend never get the publicity and the soap box she seemed to expect from Patrick—she deserved to stay anonymous on some [un]enlightened blog in some dark corner of Tumblr. But Prudence didn’t say a word. These were some of Patrick’s oldest, closest friends from England visiting, and Prudence didn’t want to piss them off, thereby piss _Patrick_ off.

Prudence knew that, inevitably, “how come you speak English?” would come up at some point during the dinner. And Prudence feared that might be her breaking point, at which she loses her temper and unleash profanities that she did not want Patrick to ever hear her hurl. The kind guaranteed to offend the Female Friend’s delicate politically-correct sensibilities and spark faux-outrage. Prudence didn’t personally believe in calling women ‘bitches’ or use the c-word, but she certainly believed in pissing off sanctimonious assholes for shits and giggles. Perhaps she just wanted to be allowed to be angry at an asshole without being accused of hating them for having a vagina. People weren’t even allowed to be _human_ anymore.

The Male Friend mostly spoke about British politics to Prudence’s relief. (Not that _that_ was pleasant, either.) Even with Prudence’s lack of knowledge of British politics, she could tell The Male Friend _aspired_ to lean quite left, and his Hero Complex was not lost to her. But at least there was less to make her blood boil due to her being unformed of the going-ons in British politics.

Why can’t these two insufferable turds just marry _each other_ instead of both courting Patrick to trying and get Patrick to marry them? (Prudence imagined 10 years from now they’d be murdering each other over Patrick.) Occasionally, The Female Friend would reaffirm what The Male Friend has just said—and vice versa, like a verbal retweet—in that mindless way First World people do, the sort of mindlessness that could only have resulted from a desperation to find life purpose. Mindless talking heads at the table like instruments in a social justice symphony, with everybody off-key _as fuck_ from reality.

Prudence sat with her back leaned against the chair in observation, just waiting for Patrick to say something that would make her despise _him_ too. _Don’t you dare, Patrick. I don’t want to have to love you if you’re anything like them too._

The only time The Female Friend spared the table her simultaneously-opinionated-and-ignorant sermons was when she preciously relished the uniqueness, rather than the taste, of her bespoke meal—which at that point consisted of a few sticks of asparagus, chops of celery, with slices of beets (and hopefully, Prudence prayed, some kitchen staff’s saliva).

Prudence knew if the Female Friend had just ordered separately from one of the many properly-vegan restaurants in LA run by proper vegan chefs, she could’ve gotten a decent meal. But Prudence also had a feeling that if the whole world suddenly turned vegan, the Female Friend would likely _stop_ being vegan as a ‘rebellion’, just to be _different_.

When the Female Friend began about her gnarly take on what she perceived to be a form of ‘feminism’, Prudence feigned a migraine and excused herself from the table before she got sucked further into the early pages of “Animal Farm”.

She got up, swiftly slid her dirty dishes into the dishwasher, stared at the floor all the way to her room, and then locked herself up in her room all night.

These two were going to be a headache in the long run if she wanted to remain friends with Patrick, she knew. Of all the pupils he went to school with, these were the ones that stuck? What was _wrong_ with Patrick that he had these tools for his besties?! They were part of the package, insufferable, and Prudence could stand neither of them but she knew they’d been a part of Patrick’s life longer than she had—far before _she’d_ ever entered his life, she knew had no right no matter how much she despised them both, and she wasn’t about to give anyone an excuse to accuse her of being a Yoko. Prudence knew she had no right.

_That_ was going to be the first and the _last_ time Prudence would dinner with Tumblr, she knew. She needed sleep. She’d already planned to sneak out the next morning to leave early for a breakfast at Starbucks that she knew couldn’t really afford just to avoid having breakfast with Patrick’s ‘friends’.

*

The day following their dinner, Prudence had a morning audition and Patrick went out with his two visiting British friends.

At afternoon class that day, Vanden, a classmate of Prudence’s asked Prudence why she “wasn’t in Patrick’s pap photos?”

“What are pap photos?” Prudence asked.

“Paparazzi, silly,” Vanden said. “Patrick was papped at The Twig having brunch with friends this morning.”

The Twig was one of those trendy places you went to be seen in LA. “It’s the place to go if you’re a famehoe,” as Vanden described it to Prudence during her first week in LA. Vanden pulled out her smartphone and showed Prudence a series of candid photos of Patrick with his two British friends from a gossip website.

“Oh. I was at an audition when this happened,” Prudence explained. “These two must be more famous than I thought for them to get—”

“ _Papped_ ,” Vanden finished Prudence’s sentence for her as if afraid Prudence might use some amateurish term like ‘photographed’ that just screamed “ _I’m not from around here!_ ”, which neither of them were.

“Nah,” Vanden shrugged. “I don’t recognise either of the friends. One of them must’ve called the paps.” Vanden said knowingly.

Vanden probably had a point because the none of the photos’ captions identified the friends and article headline mentioned only Patrick by name “Seen Out and About Brunching with Friends.” The online tabloid apparently had no clue who these friends’ names were. Prudence zoomed in the photo to inspect the pap shots closer—even still photography captured their oozing sleaze.

Prudence didn’t know what to say. She went out with Patrick all the time and they were never ‘papped’ together, so if Patrick suddenly gets ‘papped’, then someone must’ve _called_ the ‘paps’?

Vanden knew that look on Prudence’s face and explained, “you can tip a paparazzo of your whereabouts and then act all surprised and pretend you’re OMG-so-annoyed when the paps show up.”

Vanden said it with such jaded exasperation that Prudence felt morally-obligated to purse her lips in solidarity. She also emoted a healthy level of disgust with a crinkled nose for good measure. Prudence just wanted to fit in.

“Who has sushi for brunch?” Vanden with her own equally disgusted look of ‘ick’ on her face. “You know, I heard they serve the sashimi with goat cheese there.”

“Really?” Prudence asked. _That doesn’t sound so bad—actually, that sounds quite delicious._ “Euw.”

*

That day, Prudence left class with so many questions—none of which had anything to do with acting. Which one of those two tools called the paps, Guildenstern or Rosencrantz? How was Patrick okay with this? _Was_ he okay with it? Did Princess Diana call the paps? The only thing Prudence knew for sure was that she should never ask Vanden if she knew any paps’ phone numbers.

When Patrick picked her up from class as he always tried to when he could, she didn’t bring it up. The Female Friend had taken her usual spot in the passenger’s seat, so Prudence had to sit at the backseat next to the shady man. Leery of both of Patrick’s ‘friends’, Prudence leaned at the door to stay as far away as possible from him, stuffed some earphones in her earlobes, and played “Canto Ostinato”.

She closed her eyes and pretended to nap as they crept through the city’s rush hour traffic, blissfully unaware that the Female Friend had begun trolling Patrick’s thigh, daring Prudence to imagine what she must do on Patrick’s lap when Prudence wasn’t around.

Prudence hoped not all of Patrick’s friends were like the slimy ones that visited them, she sensed they were only there because they wanted something from him. Constantly looking for an angle to take advantage. A favour, second-hand exposure, whatever.

In her pretend sleep, Prudence began plotting hard, she was determined to pay back her share of the rent someday. She’d _insist_ on it, harder than Patrick insisted she not pay. She wanted to be a different kind of friend to Patrick. That way she could be a _special_ friend. In the meantime, at least Prudence could make an effort to be happy for Patrick. She felt sorry for the man who paid her rent.

He didn’t seem to have any real friends. She knew what that was like.

*

As a child, Prudence's family had lived abroad in a western country. Her mother taught her Indonesian language lessons to ensure that she would fit right back in when the time came to repatriate, but never told Prudence, that unlike in America, where they were just an average middle-class family nobody wanted anything from, in Indonesia her maternal grandfather was a village head (on the silly basis that you owned most of the land in a given village). It was a role you’d take for life in Java—until democracy happened in 1998. Her parents had come from neighbouring villages and both their respective families owned the first tiled homes when the rest of the village still lived in dirt-floored houses during the decolonisation era. Her father’s family became the first car-owning family in the area. But being a village head came with more responsibilities than perks. Her parents had neglected to inform her of this. (Perhaps they thought it was insignificant.)

In America, as a lower-middle class expatriate family with zero influence even within the Indonesian community in the state, Prudence was surrounded only by people who cared about her and her family as human beings. Her teachers—especially the assimilation councillors—were genuinely concerned for her. Her mother taught Javanese language private lessons for Asian Studies grad students. Her best student was Susan, who became a good family-friend. When they departed, the student gifted Prudence’s mother a purse as a farewell present.

Prudence remembered when she was 8 years old, her parents decided to take her down to spend the summer in Indonesia. Her paternal grandmother had just had a stroke, and her parents came to see her. Prudence remembers how, staying at her material grandparents’ house, people, even her parents’ so-called ‘friends’, rarely visited unless they wanted something. When they came to visit, there was always a transaction, something changing hands. Money, things, anything. Nobody felt sincere. She couldn’t even believe the distant relatives. Her 8-year-old self became untrusting of everyone and anyone. She associated the sound of motorbikes stopping their engines over her grandparents’ pebbled pave way with ulterior motives.

Prudence’s mother taught her that it was a ‘social responsibility’ that came with privilege, but Prudence found the insincerity of their so-called ‘friends’ nauseating. Even the French term for it, noblesse oblige, didn’t make it any better. Trouble was, oftentimes the recipients of her parents’ altruism were not truly needy, but merely greedy.

The last time Prudence had trusted another human being without suspicion, or questioned other people’s—especially adults—motives, was before the age of 8 when she was in Grade 2 of primary school. She had always been a sulky child, but before Grade 2 at least she was a child with the childlike ability to trust. Prudence had no recollection whatsoever of what it had felt like before that. Many other childhood memories came through—the astronomy extracurricular, the assimilation classes for the expat/immigrant children, the extra maths practice her mother made her do after school, her favourite toys, the snails, the terrifying blue whale in the Animal Encyclopaedia, her swimsuit, the fear inside of bathtubs… There were so many that came to her. But she couldn’t remember a thing about her trusting period.

_Probably because my dumbass took my ability to trust for granted._ Everything was ruined and ugly now. Prudence returned from that trip a different child, a different _person_. When her family returned to Indonesia permanently in Grade 4, Prudence was inconsolable.

The worst was when Prudence’s mother regifted the purse from Susan to a slimy leech who just happened to drop by while they unpacked, hinting, “oh how nice, it’s such a pity you never you use it, though?” And Prudence's mother just gave away the purse from Susan. Susan was the only genuine family friend Prudence believed her parents had. Susan had nothing to gain by befriending the family of some random Indonesian village head. And her mother threw Susan’s gift away to a person who only visited because they wanted something.

People often told her they thought it sad that she never trusted anybody since the age of 8 and has hated practically everyone she’s met since. It baffled Prudence that her loss of innocence was what they found upsetting rather than the fact that the users _existed_ in this world, they were _encouraged_ , _incentivised_ , and _rewarded_ for their behaviour. Nobody is alarmed to see these parasites walk freely among us to do as they please.

Or perhaps it was the idea that an 8-year-old who could see right through them and knew they were full of shit that bothered them? (People tended underestimated just how perceptive children can be. By the time Prudence hit sweet 16, she’d already bitterly lived half of her lifetime hating humanity.)

Either way, Prudence was determined to live a different kind of adulthood than her parents.

And if she was going to keep Patrick in her life permanently, she wasn’t going to let Patrick drag her into that life and relive the same old _sick_ pattern again.

She was _not_ going to allow herself wind up like her parents. She was going to live a different kind of adulthood from her parents and the rest of her family. She was going to befriend people who came over to check on her and ask, “are you okay?” because they _cared_. She was going to surround herself with people who sincerely only wanted and enjoyed her company.

*

Prudence wasn’t sure what she was getting herself into now. If things worked out well enough, one day, she might just end up in the same lonely place Patrick lives in now... A world where your _friends_ —and maybe even your _lovers_ —are only there to use you, and the ones not out to use you weren’t happy for you.

One right (or _wrong_ ) step and she might enter that reality. She could get her big break, she might be cast in a big hit, something she posts might go viral, the possibilities were endless… The most disturbing thing about it was that half of those possibilities might happen _accidentally_. All it would take was an oopsie slip into fame. And once you’re in, there’s no turning back. If you cease to be relevant, you won’t suddenly have your old life back, you might end up worse off. The users will want nothing to do with you—they’ll just ditch and abandon you. You’ll be alone and possibly unemployable and broke.

_You_ may stay the same, but your it’s really _your friends_ who might change. The old school friends you thought loved you just for your company now want more from you, and when you don’t play along, but they’ll accuse _you_ of changing. And if you dare leave your _changed_ friends, they’ll then tell the rags lies about how _you’ve_ changed, and _you’ve_ gotten big-headed, and _you_ act like _you’re_ “too good for them now”. It was a world of fake friends or no friends, and it was irreversible. There was no winning.

She hoped Patrick never changed and stayed the same—content to have her company and a cup of tea. ( _Poor Patrick._ ) The possibilities rammed her head like fruit in a juicer and she couldn’t focus on being Prudence from the fear of who she could end up becoming… Her brain froze over, she’d thought so hard that her head felt empty and now all her brain was capable of doing was identifying objects in front of her eyes. Book. Table. Patrick’s new business cards. Her Moleskine planner. Patrick’s designer loafers. Donuts. Patrick’s tie. A copy of GQ magazine. Her eye-cream. Toothbrush. Blanket. iPad. Tote bag. Bowl of plums. A tea pot. Her mind _too tired_ to process abstract concepts, all its possibilities. She was numb.

The week Patrick’s two British ‘friends’ came to visit was an unsettling distraction. During there time around, she kept breaking out of character except for during rehearsals and when she left the apartment. Prudence felt guarded during their stay. Patrick noticed the only thing missing from the kitchen were a few mint thins, even the box was still there. Prudence stopped stealing his food. She kept a couple of mint thins, some crackers and biscuits, in her room in case she got hungry and never ventured into the kitchen unless the coast was clear and she felt safe enough to come out.

Patrick must’ve noticed because the first thing he said to Prudence as soon as he returned from driving the two to the airport was, “is everything alright?”

Which Prudence responded with a firm, “no.”

*

After the two British friends were gone, they slowly slipped back into character. Patrick became Patrick, and Prudence became Prudence. Serenity was restored. The world became a better place. And life was good again.

Prudence was very grateful that the first friend she made in LA was a fellow foreigner to America. In the privacy of their apartment, she could pour her heart out to him without annoying any of the locals. The subject of her dislike of his “good friends” was the first thing she felt she couldn’t have an honest conversation about.

The two of them lounged around the apartment couch on a rainy day, lightly running lines and talking, Patrick told Prudence about an absurd scene in “American Psycho” about the murderous Patrick Bateman having dinner with friends. He read the scene out loud to her, off the novel rather than the screenplay, although he did mention it would be included in the TV adaptation. It was a monologue about caring about the state of the world and giving a shit about what went on in Sri Lanka because, apparently, that affects us New Yorkers too.

Slouched on Patrick’s side with her legs folded, her head laid on his chest, chipping last week’s nail polish with her constantly-anxious dermatillomaniac fingers, Prudence paused to look up to Patrick’s face to tell him lazily, “I think I already know that’s going to be my favourite part of the TV version...” Her voice cracked from the day’s exhaustion.

“I knew you’d appreciate it,” Patrick said smiled. Prudence also appreciated and found amusement in the fact that they’d cast an Englishman to play the titular American Psycho. They’d only known each other for a short while. Snuggled up against him, it was the first time Patrick saw her unlike an out-of-place-in-LA office worker. Suddenly Patrick no longer doubted Prudence’s story about having all that serious human rights career back in her previous life. She _was_ running from something worth running away from. Now he was sure that she was telling the truth. He believed her.

“What’s _your_ favourite part?” Prudence looked up at him again, waiting for answer.

Patrick said it was the monologue which ended with, “this confession has meant _nothing_.”

*****

Prudence finally arrived at the apartment building. Patrick’s home. And also, _her_ home. She liked it here. No way was she going back into _that_ life. And then what? Reduced to desperately writing roles for herself, making them obviously obvious and perfectly clear there would be no other casting choice but herself, the author. How obvious would that be?

“Do it,” Patrick always encouraged her.

“Ugh. How thirsty can you be?”

“Only as a thirsty as every other actress who’s slept with a director for a role, or pretended they’re in love with the Producer they married,” he’d always say. Kind yet cynical.


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two method actors live together.

Opening the door, she squealed.

“Patrick, Patrick, Patrick!” she couldn’t wait to tell him.

Patrick, sitting on the sofa in the living room, facing the light coming through the apartment’s floor-to-ceiling window, with his back against her.

“What, what, what?” Patrick fired back, playing along being hyper, with his eyes playfully open wide in response. He got up and turned to her. It was about 15:00 and they were under natural sunlight coming through the wide windows of their bright, white, airy, spacey living room—always kept brightly-lit somehow, as Patrick always ensured of it. Under the light-yellow sunshine, the distinction between Prudence’s pupils and her very dark brown irises became clear, and Patrick could see just how dilated her eyes were.

“Bae—” she cut herself. _He’s not your ‘bae.’_ She reminded herself. And “bae” probably wasn’t a word in the English language in the 1980s. Patrick noticed that despite already having corrected herself and begun calling him Patrick again, she was breaking out back out-of-character and remained out of it after having realised what she should have called him.

“She wasn’t going to drop you was, she?” Patrick said.

“Nope,” she shook her head gleefully.

“Ooooh, I love it when I’m right,” Patrick teased.

“Shut up,” Prudence lightly threw a cushion at him, Patrick could’ve heard the smile in her voice if she said it over the phone. Realising her energy was too scattered to stay in-character, Prudence got up and went straight to the balcony door, slid the door open, waltzed out, glancing back to Patrick from the corner of her eyes. Patrick got up and followed her out to the balcony. She sat herself down on one of the patio chairs to open her bag.

“So, what _was_ it all about?” he knew it was good.

Prudence sprung her arm up, holding the sides up to Patrick’s face, clutching it as tightly as she could to prevent the afternoon wind from robbing it away from her.

“What’s this?”

“Only the best script I’ve ever been offered ever in my life. _Ever_!” Prudence squealed. “Actually, it’s the best script I’ve ever read in my life and I can’t believe I got it.”

“Congratulations.”

Prudence felt no explanation was necessary as she’d figured everybody in town must know about it by now. Surely Patrick’s heard about it and he already had his copy of the script somewhere. Maybe they could run lines later! “Charlotte’s handed this to me super last minute,” Prudence voice shrivelled with excitement. “My audition’s literally tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”

“What time?”

“Early. Like nine-ish?”

Patrick raise his eye-brows, “well, we’ve got less than 24 hours to prepare, don’t we?”

“Hm.”

“Charlotte says we’ll be perfect for this together,” Prudence said it as if it were already an established fact. Patrick took a closer look at the script in his hands. The title read “The Fifth Wall”, he hadn’t received this script yet.

“Prudence I haven’t received this script,” he said.

“Nonsense! Go check your stack of books,” Prudence tilted her head in the direction of a 40-centimetre stack of paper, Patrick’s scripts to ‘consider’, on a shelf in the living room.

“No, really I haven’t.”

“Stop doing that,” she said with disbelief. “Stop shitting me. Of course, you _have_.”

“Well maybe I’m just not the right type,” he said.

“Bullshit, Charlotte actually asked me whether Evelyn’s talked to you about this yet. She said we’d we would be great together doing this. So clearly she thinks you _are_ the right type!”

“Prudence, with all due respect, Charlotte’s an agent, not a casting director. I _really_ haven’t received this.”

“Why do you always have to do this, Patrick. This isn’t one of your eye-contact exercises,” she said, referring to the eye-contact exercises that he made her do to practice connecting with other characters like real, normal people.

“I know it’s not,” he smiled gently.

“What do you mean? Cut the crap, Patrick.”

“I'm _not_ patronising you, okay? I really haven't heard from Evelyn,” he persisted. “Funny title, though… Want to run lines?"

Prudence sat stubbornly still, looking his way almost sulkily, as if to say, _don’t change the topic, I’m not having it_.

Patrick sighed, she was always so suspicious, paranoid, and untrusting. “Why won't you believe me?”

“Because! You're _always_ patronising me,” she said with gritted teeth. _I need you to stop treating me like a fucking little sister, I wish you would just FUCK me._ “I know you’re just pretending you haven’t gotten the script before I did. I'm not stupid Patrick you're telling me that I got a script before you ever heard of it. _Stop patronising me_.”

Patrick just sat back on his patio chair, looking sideways at Prudence.

“Look me in the eyes, Patrick, look me in the _eyes_ and tell me in what alternate universe do I get a script this brilliant before you do?!”

“Uh, how about an AU on AO3?” Patrick joked, trying to lighten things up.

Prudence squinted, did he just say “AO3”? As in the fanfic-hosting site? Patrick barely uses social media and knows nothing about that scene, how could he possibly know what AO3 was? _Huh._ He sounded off for a minute there, like he just read that off a badly-written script. Like dialogue written for the wrong character. _Weird._

“What, do you want me to prove it for you?” Patrick challenged her, sounding more patronising than ever to Prudence. “I can call Evelyn now?”

Prudence didn’t anything, his tone made her all the grumpier, and by now her face looked plain sour. Patrick went inside and took his smartphone out to the balcony with him—the apartment had no landline—pressed a button, and enunciated the command, “call Evelyn.”

His smartphone dialled Evelyn’s number for him, Patrick turned on the speaker phone for Prudence to hear everything. The ringing tone only went off one and a half times before Evelyn answered. After all, Patrick was one of her most prized clients. She’d indulged him, agreed to call him by his characters’ names during and in between roles for his “craft” (she only did this for Patrick). It was hard to keep track, as he booked and changed roles often, but the business Patrick brought in was worth the special treatment.

“Hey, Patrick,” Evelyn answered, chirpy as always. All the agents Prudence met in LA were chirpy and cheerful like that, none of them were grumpy alcoholic men like she’d imagined.

“Evelyn, hey!”

“What’s up?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know about a script entitled ‘The Fifth Wall’, would you?” Patrick directed the question to Prudence rather than Evelyn, sounding more like his character now.

“Ugh. _Every_ one’s talking about it,” Evelyn said. “ _Every_ body wants it.”

“Aaaam… I the right type for it?”

“Yes! Oh, God, Patrick, yes, of course! I’m _so_ sorry, I meant to have Paul send over the script yesterday, but something came up. We had our hands full and—”

“It’s okay. Just checking.” Patrick widened his eyes comically at Prudence, as if to say, _see_?

Prudence blushed.

“It’s just that the writer had very specific instructions on who gets to see the script, she had a _blacklist_ of people she did _not_ , under any circumstances, want anywhere near the script!” Evelyn went on. “Can you believe it, she had a _black_ list?”

Patrick smiled teasingly to Prudence, mouthing, “ooooh!” and covered his mouth with the tips of his fingers. He looked for the point at the bottom end of his phone to find the little holes that were his smartphone’s mic to cover it with his thumb.

“It’s only for special peepul!” he said under his breath, winked, and removed his thumb afterward.

“I mean who has a blacklist for a script?!” Evelyn rambles on. “Legal had a look at it—they’d never seen a writer make demands like that before. She had very specific her instructions on which individuals in town were not to have any access to the script. I just wanted to be sure, apparently the writer has a _clause_ in the contract—I mean she had a full-on _contract_ —where she made it very clear in this clause that any leaks or access to the wrong people basically entitled her to revoke all rights to the script. She I mean was adamant about keeping certain people away from production too. Legal said it was practically worded like a _restraining order_ , so we wanted to get it right, we can’t screw this up, Patrick. We _had_ to take precautions before handing it to our clients. But I was meaning to hand you the copy—”

“Really, it’s okay.”

Now _this_ sparked Prudence’s interest. Fascinating, Charlotte hadn’t said anything about the anonymous writer demanding to keep certain people away from the script _or_ filming! She suddenly wished she could make the same demands against Patricks two annoying British friends. She could _not_ with those two. Plus, there was something about the way they carried themselves that had Prudence believe they would do whatever it took to get what they wanted from Patrick, including harming _her_. But Prudence tried to not think about it.

“Patrick,” Evelyn sounded like she was about to say something delicate. “Prudence can’t see this… This is confidential—”

“Prudence already has it.”

Pause. Evelyn sounded lost for words. Prudence looked at Patrick, waiting for a response.

“Oh,” she let out, with a tinge of bewilderment, like that was completely unexpected.

“That’s why I’m asking,” Patrick said. “I was just wondering, if I’d be right for it too?”

“Absolutely. Of course! You’d be _perfect_ for it!” Evelyn said hastily, as if that would’ve upset Patrick if he weren’t. “We just had to run it through Legal first, you know make sure everything’s in order.”

“Prudence seems to think it’s a pretty _epic_ script,” Patrick smiled at his taking on Prudence’s vocabulary. He kind of liked how she overused the word ‘epic’.

“Well, it is… But is Prudence aware that she shouldn’t be _talking about it_ to anyone?” Evelyn said carefully. Prudence furrowed her brows and shook her head to Patrick. Charlotte said nothing of the sort.

“Nah, she just got sides, it’s probably about only five pages,” Patrick said to the smartphone. “Should be harmless.”

“Oh, sure. I’m _sure_ they’ve censored out the really important bits.”

“Yeah, just enough for tomorrow.”

“Oh, Charlotte scheduled her for tomorrow, did she?”

“Yeah, that’s why I was wondering if I could get the script now-ish? She could use a little help running lines.”

“Sure, we could do that. We’re really sorry about this, Patrick,” Evelyn continued apologetically. “Legal, and yesterday was crazy—just _crazy_ … You know how things get around here!”

Evelyn continued venting discreetly, keeping all the names out of her rant, but even without any of names named, Prudence had a pretty good idea what type of drama might have ensued in at the agency yesterday. Prudence imagined it involved a recasting decision, or someone had to be killed off, bruised egos to tranquilise with flattery. Or perhaps some production wanted to cast some actress and another actress already on the show threatened to leave if they hired the new addition. Then something would have to be done to make it up to her, or both actresses. Prudence decided she’d rather not know the details anyway—more intriguing was who’s on the anonymous writer’s blacklist, and more importantly _why_ they were on the blacklist? Prudence knew Evelyn would never tell, maybe Charlotte would tell her if she landed the role. Evelyn stopped herself.

“Yeah, it’s really okay, Evelyn,” Patrick told her. “Really. I totally get it, shit happens.”

“I’ll send Billy—I mean _Paul_ , over with the script.”

“Thanks, Evelyn.”

That was just one of the differences between Prudence and Patrick: she had to go fetch her sides and he had his “books” delivered to him. Prudence wondered if there were actual priority lists at the agencies with an internal Ulmer scale at each office, printed black-on-white and laminated, or if it were just an informal systematic “playing favourites” situation.

Prudence wasn’t going to hate on them for it today. After all, Charlotte gave _her_ special treatment for being too broke for a Lyft ride today.

“See you soon.”

“Yeah. Bye, thanks again.”

And with that they hung-up.

“Well!” Patrick looked to Prudence. “There’s _that_!”

An asshole might’ve added, “congrats on getting a good script before I did!” But Patrick didn’t. Prudence was well-aware of the fact that Patrick was no angel, and self-aware enough to realise that perhaps she viewed him through rose-tinted glasses. Although she’d never outwardly admit it, she knew she had a bit of a crush on him. Maybe it was a physical attraction because he’s tall and lanky, just the way she likes her men, and has a cute nose and was just Prudence’s type. Down to the dark hair (blonds were too alien for her). Beyond the dreaminess, however, she knew her dashing Patrick was perfectly capable of being jerkish and rubbing his success in his contemporary’s faces—especially if he considered them competition, and he _could_ be a tad condescending. (If Patrick thought the recipient was deserving.) Patrick did have an ego, she observed. But for the most part, apart from the occasional playful innocent teasing, Patrick was a gentleman and quite sweet toward Prudence. She sometimes wondered if it was because he didn’t see her as his equal and only picked on those he considered his own size. Whenever that thought bothered her, she thought to herself, _at least that meant he wasn’t a bully_. And that should be a good thing.

But before she could drown herself in shame of being wrong— _again_ , two drops of rain fell on her sides, she snatched them from the patio table, and held them to her chest.

“Come on,” Patrick signalled her to come back into the apartment as heavier raindrops fell harder on the balcony tiles.

“Okay, now show me what’s so great about this script anyway? Let me see,” Patrick said after Evelyn hung-up. Prudence stuck her tongue out without a smile. “Come on now! Let me see,” Patrick motioned her to hand her the script again.

She handed him the script. Patrick took it from her hands and flicked through the pages and skim-read it. Prudence felt butterflies in her tummy, eager and excited to share the sheer awesomeness of the script. _All the possibilities!_ She had the tips of her fingers on her lips, waiting for Patrick to make some exclamation so they could squeal in excitement over the script together.

“Isn’t it brilliant…” Prudence quietly said to herself. “One audition and you get everything. It’s like a gift that keeps on giving, except it’s not herpes.”

Patrick laughed at the herpes metaphor and read the script with a smile until he wasn’t.

Patrick’s face suddenly changed, and Prudence couldn’t make out what expression it was. All she knew was the smile disappeared off his face. And Prudence did not like that look he now had on his face. Her heart sank so fast and so low, that it sucker-punched her gut to the point of feeling literally sick. She thought he’d be _happy_ for her.

_No, no, no, please Patrick don’t be like that. Please don’t be like the girls from school!_ Not like the girls she went to school with who couldn’t be happy for her! She likes Patrick so much. Please still like _me_.

He flipped the pages faster, speed-reading it, returned to the front of the sides, and reread it. And then… He looked almost _peeved_ at her? Just please don’t be angry? Why would he be angry or ticked-off? He drew a sharp breath. Wait… What’s that looked? _Now_ he looked _perplexed_. Why, though?

“Prudence,” looking Prudence straight in the eyes, he sounded frustrated. “Have you even _read_ this script?”

“Yeah?” Prudence didn’t appear to understand the question. “Of course. I read it right in front of Charlotte at the restaurant.”

“Prudence. Have you actually _read_ this script?” Patrick said slowly and very deliberately, waving the rolled-up sides in his hands to emphasise his words.

“Yes.”

“Prudence. This is the show—,” he said, he drew a sharp breath, sounding _very annoyed_. “We’re already on this show.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Prudence, _we are already on this show_ ,” Patrick said slowly, it felt to him like he was in slow motion, it felt heavy. Like the how you’d try to scream in a dream, but your voice wouldn’t come out.

“What do you _mean_?”

“I mean, we are actually, currently working in this show, Pru-dence. A show about two method actors living together as roommates.”

“What?” Prudence said softly. This was ludicrous.

“This is the premise of the show are currently filming, Prudence. _Now_.” Patrick pointed at the floor. “Except the show we’re were working on hasn’t been given a title yet, they’ve just been used the working title, ‘Method’ in reference to method acting. But this _is definitely our show_. The one that we’re _already on_.”

Patrick looked up at the ceiling. He couldn’t believe this was actually happening. Prudence had her quirks, but this was just plain… Stupidity. It hurt Patrick to think that about her as stupid. When they first met, she had indicated that she was ADHD and he had seen for himself how absent-minded she could sometimes be, she had to meticulously plan her day, or she’d end up lost somewhere—she even told him that once she found herself stranded and lost in Hong Kong for 24 hours because she wasn’t paying attention to which plane to board and missed her flight. But Patrick thought even this, completely forgetting that she was already working on this script, part of this production, was a little too scatter-brained for Prudence. This was out-of-character—even for her. She was usually so particular about being off-book, being on-time… And then she forgets she’s in the middle of production, gets handed facsimile of the script she’s working on, and doesn’t _even realise it_? She’s supposed to be scatter-brained but not _hare_ -brained! How is this even possible, and why would Charlotte hand her a script to audition for a show she’s already on? Would Prudence show up to an empty audition room tomorrow? To an audition room number used for another project? Charlotte was notorious for being disorganised as well, he knew. An absent-minded actress and an equally disorganised agent, and this is what you get! But _how_ could she miss something this big? Patrick rested his back on the couch, turned to look at Prudence. She was still there, sitting, looking at him. She appeared to not understand what he was trying to tell her. But how does a person completely forget being on a show they’re currently on and filming?

“Well if we’re already on a show, then where are the cameras?” Prudence asked, sincerely confused and equally curious.

“Not here Prudence,” Patrick frustrated. Then she saw it. The cold Patrick Bateman gaze. “At the _studio_. We’re not filming _right now_. That’s next week, we’re just in-character _method acting_ at _home_ now.” Patrick couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with her.

“I don’t understand why you keep saying we’re already on this show?”

“Because we _are_ , Prudence,” Patrick knew he and Prudence were already the leads of the show, they were just on a week’s break from filming as the production team for the show needed to get some logistics sorted—they were meant to film on-location filming scenes on location outside LA next week.

Now Patrick was worried. Something was clearly off here. But what exactly was wrong? This didn’t feel like ADHD. He wondered if Prudence might be ill with something. He looked at her with genuine concern. And what was this, the early stages of a degenerative neurocognitive disorder? She’s too young for dementia… Perhaps a brain tumour? Brain injury? (Should he take her to an Emergency Room now?) That might explain why Prudence seems to have no recollection of being on “Method”. But a brain injury doesn’t explain why Evelyn would agree to send him the “The Fifth Wall” script again too. And what about Charlotte? He squeezed his eyes shut. _Think_. There was no ingenious team of screenwriters to help his character do his detective work for him this time. He was on his own now. He thought hard.

_This might be a prank_ , he concluded.

“Hold on, what exactly did Charlotte say when she handed the sides to you?” Now this was the actor, not Patrick Bateman.

“Nothing? I mean, nothing in particular—just like she’d do when she hands me any of my sides… Just that these ones were special because they’re, like,” she put up air quotes. “top-secret and printed on copy-proof paper.”

“Prudence,” Patrick said. He was out of character again. “Focus, you’re getting distracted.”

“I don’t understand.”

He raised his voice without realising it, “Prudence. Listen to me. This is a script. That we are _already producing_ ,” he spelled out his words one by one as if speaking to a child. “We. Are. Already. _On_. This. Show. It’s called ‘Method’, but that’s just the working title, Prudence _darling_ —this ‘Fifth Wall’ title must be the official title. I don’t know! Who the fuck knows anymore?!”

Prudence just sat there staring at him, dumbfounded. She doesn’t recall this being part of Patrick’s storyline in “American Psycho”, so what is happening?

“Yeah… That’s it. This _has_ to be some sort of… _prank_ ,” he decided, then he rambled, “Maybe this part of a publicity stunt to promote the show, the first episode’s premiere in a fortnight. Yeah… That makes sense, that makes _total_ sense…”

“What do you mean a prank?” Prudence asked. She suddenly remembers a story about how English theatre actors considered it bad form to be off-book way before the rest of their castmates. There were all sorts of rules, some unspoken that she’d learned herself from experience—at the community theatre, she’d learned that if you had been directed to act a certain way, and a third party was invited to give external feedback, none of the more experienced actors ever said, “well, I was directed to do that—it wasn’t a choice I made.” It was like a big “no-no”. There were many other unspoken rules like that in the industry. Perhaps there was a rule in Hollywood that making films about method actors was a taboo? “Is it bad for a film to be about method actors or something?”

Patrick ignored her question and stood up to start looking around, were there cameras? No hidden cameras. He looked under the tables as if checking to see if they were tapped or recorded. He went through some books in the near-empty shelfs, knocking things off searching for recording devices.

“No, cameras…” he muttered. “Yeah, but it might still be...” Patrick uttered to himself. Was Prudence in on it? Would Paul walk through the door with Evelyn and yell, ‘booyah gotcha!’

“Why did you do that…” Prudence got up and blankly got on her knees to pick up the books and a wooden minimalist art piece on the floor to put back on the shelf.

Patrick looked at Prudence suspiciously. It was entirely plausible, he was the bigger ‘star’, Prudence was a total unknown with not a single credit from outside Indonesia. The producers—or marketing—must’ve enlisted her into this prank, publicity stunt, whatever this was. His piercing eyes burned at her. Prudence had never seen him like this before. Was that the actor or Patrick? She tried not to let it get to her. Prudence had read the “American Psycho”, she knew who and what Patrick was supposed to be. But this was a little _too_ real.

“Patrick, you’re scaring me,” her voice trembled. This time not from excitement she couldn’t contain. Patrick saw her eye moisten. He knew she didn’t know how to cry on cue. She made a point of telling him that she didn’t want to learn how as it solidified the fact that she could was capable of being a habitual liar.

“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically.

At this point, both were had broken out of character. Something was terribly wrong, and Patrick sensed that they wouldn’t survive this together if he remained in character. The situation required something the character he played did not possess. This was an emergency. Something about this felt _sinister_.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” was all he said.

“Since when are you the into a new intuitive paranoid one? That’s my role!” Prudence almost-jokingly, but she was terrified as well, although she wasn’t sure of what—more of Patrick than anything else, but he seemed concerned about something _malicious_. Patrick was the person she relied on rational thought, for all the know-hows of how to survive in LA. Seeing him confused was disconcerting. It made LA scarier to her than it already was.

“Huh. Prudence, honey,” he was sweating. “I think I’m losing my mind.”

“Patrick, this is not funny,” Prudence said sternly.

Patrick knew it wasn’t. But if he was scared, he wasn’t about to let it show.

He picked-up Prudence’s sides again. It didn't say who the scriptwriter was by name on Prudence’s copy, he knew the writer of “Method” chose to remain anonymous which Patrick found a bit dodgy but said nothing about it at the time since it was such a good idea for a show and it wouldn’t hurt his career.

Then Patrick considered the possibility of this being plagiarised work. What if someone stole the idea for “Method”, the exact same idea, passed in on under a different title, “The Fifth Wall”, and tried to cast unknown Prudence into the knock-off unaware that Prudence was already attached to the original? That would explain how Prudence got the script before _he_ was offered it. He was more well-known, and word must’ve spread that _he’d_ already been cast in the original, but nobody knew _her_. He looked at her, she was looking at him with her legs on the couch, almost cowering.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait until Paul arrives with my copy,” he said as calmly as he could.

*

About 20 minutes later the doorbell rang, it was Paul. It would’ve normally just taken 10 minutes to get a script delivered from the agency on a bicycle, but there had been light rain.

When Patrick answered the door, Paul was just in the middle of pulling out of his khaki satchel what appeared to be paper material in a rectangular pizza box-like carton sealed in layers upon layers of wrappers. Prudence noticed that under Paul’s unbuttoned pastel yellow cotton button-down shirt, was a tee with a comic drawing of a brontosaurus munching on leaves over captions that read “herbivore”, a “vegetarian” badge was also pinned on his sling messenger bag. (Ick.) Even from where Prudence was seated, he reeked of legalised weed with a drop of bicycling sweat. With headphones hung around his neck, Paul said, “hi, Patrick,” and handed the package to Patrick.

Patrick didn’t respond. He took the package and flung it onto the coffee table.

_Huh, so he wasn’t messing with me_ , she thought. Now that a real office runner was at their door to deliver a script that Evelyn had confirmed Patrick never received, Prudence just felt awful for doubting him. She had overheard the entire phone conversation, Patrick had honestly not been given the script or offered the role. She had been so caught up in her own insecurities that she couldn’t recognise a good thing happening to her. She, for real, just got a _good script_ before Patrick did. She wasn’t just getting more leftovers from actresses his level.

“Sorry, man,” Pail said, “Evelyn meant to call. I was supposed to deliver this at—”

Patrick grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him into the apartment. Paul, startled and speechless, looked like he was trying to figure out what was happening.

“What the fuck are you playing at?” Patrick asked.

“What?!” Paul looked at him. “Playing at what?!”

“This!” Patrick held Prudence’s sides in his face.

“What’s _that_?!”

“The Fifth Wall,” Patrick yelled, pointing to Prudence with her sides in his hand. “Messing with her head! Messing with _my_ head! We’re already in this show. What is this?!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Are you in on this?” Patrick said threateningly.

“No! What the hell?!” Paul looked pissed. “In on what? What the fuck are you talking about?”

“The script is exactly the fucking same!”

“How the fuck would I know? I haven’t read what’s in it! The script is sealed! It’s confidential,” Paul defended himself. “Listen, man. I heard it’s even printed on freaking copy-proof paper, alright? I’m not messing with it!”

Finally, Patrick backed off. And then suddenly inching back closer to Paul’s face, he grabbed Paul by the face and squeezed his cheeks with one hand, he said, “if I find out that you so much _know_ this is a prank or a publicity student, I will _break your neck_ and cannibalise your brain.”

“Patrick!” Prudence got up, hyperventilating.

“Woah man, chill.” Paul tried to pacify him. “Take it easy with the method.” Which failed to pacify Patrick because he pounced right back to grabbing Paul by the collars. Prudence squeezed her petite 150 cm body in between both men and pushed Patrick, who was twice her size, as hard as she could.

“What the hell, Patrick?!” Prudence turned to Paul, “go! I can _not_ be caught in the middle of a murder in this bloody country! I’m a fucking _business_ visa! I just _can’t_ with you jackasses!”

Paul just stood there staring at Patrick and then to Prudence, but then to Patrick again.

“Go!!!!” Prudence yelled. Paul looked a bit taken aback but still wouldn’t budge. Prudence’s blood began to boil—Paul’s ignoring reminded her feeling unheard, of her insignificance, Prudence screamed, “if you don’t go, I will watch Patrick chop your ass and cannibalise your flesh with him!”

Paul snapped out of it and ran for his life. But as Paul turn to leave, Prudence the rest of Paul’s messenger bag’s lapel became visible to Prudence, and she could see that in addition to the “vegetarian” sprout badge, there were two others: a sewn-on patch of an astronaut riding on a square-cut brownie emitting marijuana leaves as well as an enamel pin that read “Legalise the Ganja” (in US spelling with a Z). But there was just something about the way the “vegetarian” badge sparkled under the hallway lights, if it were _shining_ , that flicked a switch in her brain, it pushed her to the edge. When she saw Paul take-off something inside Prudence broke, and she snapped. She took off running after Paul down the hall.

“I will fucking eat you! I will fucking _eat_ you!” Prudence screamed. Patrick ran after Prudence, and before she had a chance to grasp on his outer-shirt, someone had pulled her away by the torso—Patrick—and took her back into the apartment, halfway down the hall toward their apartment she could feel her feet stop touching the ground, Patrick had lifted her to carry her away as she kicked and screamed, “suck my imaginary balls, vegetarian!!!! I will cook your chewy sirloin!”

_Ding_. The sound of the lift bell, the door opened, Paul hopped in, they could hear Paul’s hand panickingly smacking the lift’s door-closing button to make it close faster.

“I bet your vegetarian flesh tastes extra _special_!” she shrieked with all her heart as the doors slid close.

Patrick finally managed to get both of them back inside their apartment, closed the door behind him, leaning on it. He grinned at Prudence and released a particularly mischievous low grumble of a laugh.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” she said almost with disgust, which cracked him up for some reason. She fell on the couch with a plop and slumped down.

“I don’t know, Prudence... But _something’s_ wrong with that script,” he said pointing at the package on the coffee table. “Let’s unbox this.” He rubbed his palms against each other.

That normally would’ve enough to distracted her, but... Hm, that’s bloody fucking _off_ , isn’t it? Since when does he say “unbox”? _Again_ , Patrick speech is odd today—like he’s acting off a badly-written script written by some YouTuber who has zero clue what kind of person Patrick is. But Prudence didn’t say anything. She was still trying to even out her breathing after all the chasing and kicking and screaming.

“You mean ‘unwrap’ this,” she whispered, slightly puzzled. But Patrick couldn’t hear her, he grabbed a Swiss Army knife from a drawer in the kitchen, flipped out one of the smaller blades, and began carefully cutting the package open. It was wrapped in three layers of marked sealed-plastic envelopes—the kind used for duty-free shopping, those ICAO-approved security tamper-evident bags. As Patrick pealed the seals off, she watched the words “OPENED”, “OPENED”, “OPENED” pop-up one by one from the coloured film lines. The author meant serious business—no wonder Evelyn was so nervous about running the particulars of the writer’s demands through the agency’s legal department.

_But of course_ , Patrick got the full script, not just sides. Prudence wouldn’t expect less. But it still hurt. Even as Prudence had her upgrade of sides printed on copy-proof paper, Patrick’s came in delivered like he was 007 himself. That confirmed to Prudence’s status, that she was in fact still a second-class citizen. Maybe Charlotte was just being nice. And the cherry on top was a handwritted note that read, “For Your Consideration” in cursive handwriting.

Prudence would never be able to keep up with Patrick.

Again, no writer’s name. Still anonymous. Patrick thought about it. The second scripts were over-the-top delivered double-wrapped, sealed like classified files. Prudence had to meet Charlotte in person and her sides were printed on copy-proof paper. Patrick understood why production might be paranoid about the script leaking, but why go over the top with the _second_ set of scripts when the original ones weren’t given the “Top Secret” treatment too? Throw buyers off? None of it made sense. Especially if the second set is _plagiarised work_ and the _first_ was the original. Patrick couldn’t wrap his head around the absurdity of it all.

When Patrick opened the rest of the script, it was the rest of the little excerpt that Prudence got. Prudence noticed that he got the entire pilot’s episodes book. She felt inadequate.

Patrick’s ‘book’ had the confidential bits revealed and all laid out for him on the first couple of pages including a table with all the characters that the nameless Actor and Actress were supposed to play in the first season:

**Season**

| 

**Episode**

| 

**ACTOR**

| 

**ACTRESS**  
  
---|---|---|---  
  
001

| 

001

| 

Hamlet (“Hamlet”, stage)

| 

Ophelia (“Hamlet”, stage)  
  
 

| 

002

| 

[LINGERS DURING PERIOD OF UNEMPLOYMENT]

Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”, television miniseries)

| 

Laura Wingfield (“The Glass Menagerie”, made-for-TV film)  
  
 

| 

003

| 

Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”, television miniseries)

| 

Laura Wingfield (“The Glass Menagerie”, made-for-TV film)

Prudence (“Beyond Therapy”, stage)  
  
 

| 

004

| 

Patrick Bateman (“American Psycho”, television miniseries)

| 

Prudence (“Beyond Therapy”, stage)  
  
 

| 

005

| 

Bruce Wayne (“Batman”, film)

| 

[LINGERS DURING PERIOD OF UNEMPLOYMENT]  
  
 

| 

006

| 

Bruce Wayne (“Batman”, film)

| 

Lucy (“Candy Striper Strange”, short film)  
  
 

| 

007

| 

TBD

| 

TBA  
  
Patrick sat there in a daze, he wasn’t sure whether he should call Evelyn? Was he really losing his mind? Or should he just show up with Prudence at the casting office tomorrow and deal with it then? Patrick’s could no longer hide his unease.

“We’ll just have to see how what happens tomorrow,” he said trying to mask his fear. He just wanted Prudence to get back into character and stop being a thirsty for a role she was already playing.

Patrick’s phone rang. Prudence saw Evelyn’s name flash on the screen. Patrick took no time to answer the phone, again putting it on speaker so they could both listen. Evelyn similarly took no time to confront Patrick as soon as he said, “hello.”

“Patrick did you threaten to kill Paul?” Evelyn frantically yelled over the phone. “I know you’re a method actor, but you can’t just kill people for, for your _craft_ , Patrick. You can’t.”

“Okay, fine,” Patrick chuckled, for a moment forgetting about the scripts. “I promise I won’t kill anyone.”

“I’m serious, Patrick. The LAPD won’t take lightly a method actor trying to kill—”

“Evelyn. Relax. I wasn’t actually going to kill him, okay? I lost my temper. Can we let go of this already?”

“Okay. I just can’t have you going around killing people,” Evelyn said. “I know how you guys get…”

Prudence thought she knew what Evelyn meant by that. Grown-ups playing pretend on a big screen being precious about their ‘craft’ so their professions can be important too, and then throw a big party to celebrate themselves every awards season. Then they delude themselves about how much their artistry contributed to culture and humanity, and just how much their industry created jobs for thousands. And then they become the face of a good cause so their lives could have meaning too. Prudence figured that must be how her former grad school classmates and professors must see her now… Prudence tried to shake the thought out of her head.

“I just got a little carried away…” Patrick suddenly sounded lethargic, suddenly remember the scripts again. The sun was going down outside, gentle wind, leaves rustling the way they should on a weekday, Prudence noticed outside the window.

“Okay, I’ve got to go,” Evelyn said. “You behave, Patrick Bateman. I don’t want to hear about any more attempted murders. Do you understand?”

She sounded dead serious, and Patrick sounded like he found that deadly hilarious.

“Okay, bye—” Before he hung up, something suddenly occurred to Patrick, “Wait! Evelyn! Could you arrange for Prudence and I to audition together?”

Prudence frowned and pursed her lips a bit before mouthing, “noooo…”

Patrick covered the bottom of his phone with his palm and mouthed back, “trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

“The Actor’s and The Actress’ don’t read together until the chemistry test,” Evelyn said. “They’re casting on separate dates.”

“Are the casting directors for both parts the same people?”

“Yes.”

“Eeeevelyyyyn…” he sang. “Pretty please?”

Prudence broke a smile, she heard imaginary bird chirps and nature sounds in her head as he said it.

“You can’t keep asking favours of me,” Evelyn sighed.

“ _Please_ , this is very important,” he said. Then Patrick made something up on the spot, “there’s some creep at the casting office harassing Prudence. Can I just come in with her this one time before it escalates into stalking?”

“Alright,” Evelyn finally gave in.

“Thanks, I appreciate this,” Patrick.

“But be a good, Patrick. I don’t want to hear about you killing the guy.”

“I won’t. Bye,” Patrick hung-up.

Prudence frowned. She didn’t want any more favours—especially not _double_ favours from Patrick _and_ Evelyn that she never asked for. She already owed Patrick her half of a month’s rent. She _hated_ owing people things.

“Oh my God, what the fuck did you just do?! You pull strings! You promised—” Prudence’s lips curved up, she looked betrayed. “You promised you wouldn’t pull strings…”

“It was for my own benefit,” Patrick reasoned. “I’m worried about you. I want to be sure this is legit.”

Prudence didn’t have an answer to that if he legitimately felt he needed to protect her, but against what? Patrick seemed to believe they were already on a show just like “The Fifth Wall”?

“Shut up! I feel embarrassed just having this conversation with you!”

“I am not trying to humiliate you,” Patrick said, attempting to coax out of her sour mood. “I promise...”

“Do you want to run lines for tomorrow?” Patrick offered. “We can take a break being Prudence and Patrick for a day?”

Prudence didn’t respond. _Why won’t you fuck me._

Patrick wasn’t sure why he was doing this. _Was_ he really keeping her in the dark to protect her? Was Prudence playing games? Was he playing along? One side of him _wanted_ to believe her mischievous self was in on some publicity stunt prank, but his gut told him feel he should fear for her, for them _both_. But why? Were they in trouble? He couldn’t put his finger on it.

“Which bit are you reading tomorrow?” he asked.

“I don’t know? _You’re_ the one with the _book_ ,” she said coldly. Glaring at his full pilot script. Part of her felt like snatching that… big book from Patrick’s hand so she could get a better idea who the actress she was playing was. Or rip apart that stupid book. Suddenly those fancy sides just weren’t fancy enough anymore.

_Crap_ , shouldn’t have worded it that way. Patrick closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Here,” Patrick took gently the sides from Prudence’s hands. “I’ll look for the scene.”

Patrick seemed to have gotten carried away in reading the book. He spent exactly 27 minutes reading it. She knew this because she started wearing a watch on her right wrist (out of habit, not because she was a lefty). Living in 1981, you couldn’t just look to your phone for the time. Tick, tick, tick… Staring get her watch, the ticking of the seconds arm on her wristwatch became so intense, the outer corners of her eye’s vision began shake with every tick, she quickly looked away to make it stop.

The hurt became more intense and exaggerated as it sunk in while she stared at her watch waiting for him to find the scene. It gives time for unpleasant feelings and thoughts to really sink in. She would’ve preferred to check her Twitter timeline or select the best shot to upload to Instagram, but that’s not what her character would’ve done. 30-year-olds in 1981 kill time differently than 30-year-olds in 2018. They didn’t have YouTube to watch cat videos on. No wonder people were so mad in the ‘80s. It’s easier for people today—they just distract themselves with cat videos on YouTube video.

Something about playing Prudence made, something about playing a character from the ‘80s that made her a smidgen violent—she didn’t think she had it in her, but here it was. Prudence clenched her fists in a way she’d never done so before. Her knuckles itched. Figuratively. As a matter of fact, she could punch a hole in the wall right now. She still loves the actor, and she would not want to hurt him.

_Mindfulness, Prudence, mindfulness,_ she pepped-talked herself.

Patrick told her she couldn’t just attribute all of her pre-social media characters’ angst to lack of social media, but Prudence was quite sure her character analysis was spot on this time. (“That’s like saying every cranky person is cranky because they haven't gotten laid in ages,” he argued.) Screw him and his fancy-pants drama school in Shakespeare’s England.

If Polonius had just created a fake Twitter account to snoop, nobody would’ve gotten stabbed behind a curtain in “Hamlet”, and Ophelia would’ve stayed alive. Plus, if Ophelia was more self-obsessed and took more selfies on Instagram, she’d be less obsessed in Hammy to begin with, and none of that mess would’ve happened at all.

_Not so timeless now, are we, Willy?_ Prudence had no words, no words, no words for Patrick’s love for that overrated piece-of-shit royalist fanfic writer. What did Patrick see in him? _Dude barely spoke proper English. (How obnoxious.)_

_But Patrick, bless his heart, doesn’t partake and is ill-informed in matters pertaining to social media. He just doesn’t know any better. Maybe Patrick’s fancy-pants drama school in England needs a curriculum update._ Patrick was old school with his paper books. He was also the faster reader between the two of them. Prudence waited. She was under the impression that Patrick would’ve just skimmed the script to be sure Prudence wasn’t being played. But he must’ve gotten lost in the brilliance of it all, the story was about two actors but from Prudence’s glorified “fancy” sides, she could barely tell who her actress character was playing. It was a secret. So precious was the secret they’d rather risk her give a bad audition from the lack of information provided to her to perform because she wasn’t allowed to see the big picture. It’s not fair.

She heard the snap of a stack of script close in front of her, and they both looked up in unison, looking at each other.

Patrick seemed to notice something on or about her face and raised one of his large hands, placed it on the side of her head, and massaged his thumb between her furrowed brows.

“Hey,” he said, as he ironed out the knotted muscles between her brows. “Why so serious?”

“No. Nothing, just looking at my watch,” she said curtly and looked away, at some wild greenery out the window, some potted plants on the balcony.

_No, not really. I was having resentful thoughts about you again._

“Come on now, are you still upset about the favour I asked Evelyn?” Patrick said. “It’s no big deal, Prudence. Tiny.” He gestured ‘small’ with pinched fingers.

Prudence sat quiet.

“I’m really doing it for myself. This whole thing is creeping me out.”

“Don’t patronise me!” she yelled. This time actually make eye-contact with him, glaring into his eyes. Patrick had been teaching her how to make eye-contact with characters she was playing opposite to connect better through ‘eye-contact’ exercises. He said they would make her react to them more organically as opposed to taking turns reading her lines after they’ve delivered theirs. It worked, but she resented how patronising it felt that he knew everything and she didn’t, and now he was pulling strings for her, and all she could of to say was, “this isn’t one of your vocal exercise thingies, Patrick!”

They weren’t equals and would probably never be. Prudence tried not to dwell on the thought very often—as just the idea of it _stung_ , but the reality just kept creeping back in as with any fact of life. it was inescapable.

Prudence was on Backstage.com and Patrick was in Variety. That’s where they were in life.

Patrick was never mean about it, but he’d learn to not bring it up inadvertently two weeks ago when he invited her to be his plus-one at an event, she felt the jab in her heart and burst out crying right in front of him. At first, he’d thought they were happy tears, until she flinched away from his touch as he touched her arm and tell her to pick a dress.

“What do you think I am—” she said. She nearly added, “your trophy girlfriend bimbo?!” until she remembered she wasn’t even pretty and therefore could not qualify as a ‘bimbo’ at all. It upset her even more. She didn’t talk to him for a week after that.

On the day of the event, Patrick quietly left the apartment in a black-tie tux without fanfare. When Prudence heard how softly the lock of the door clicked—as if Patrick tried to exit the apartment as quietly as possible, she knew she was probably being too hard on him. She knew he didn’t mean to be callous or insensitive, he meant well. It _was_ an invite. How could he have understood how humiliating it was for someone to have to stand on a red carpet when they had no proper credits or notable achievements of their own? He’d never been in her shoes. Fuck him, but it wasn’t his fault he was luckier in life. And then after the door had gently closed, she hastily texted, “have a good time. I’m sorry for being such a Grinch.”

“That’s alright. I understand,” he texted back. And then he did something he’d never done before but knew Prudence would like: Patrick texted her a heart emoji. The first emoji he’d ever used. The first time he felt justified and didn’t feel silly using one.

“I want to be happy for you,” she typed back with lightning speed.


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two method actors live together.

Lucky for Patrick, Prudence wasn’t her Grinchy-self this evening. She was curled like a cat on his bed beside him.

Tonight, she decided to sleep in his room—out of guilt for doubting him, if anything. She crawled onto his bed claiming she wanted to watch TV together just like how yesterday they watched a Farrah Fawcett film, “Murder in Texas”. Only this time went straight to sleep. They’d had a long, confusing afternoon. Prudence had a stressful early morning. They were beat. And Patrick had decided to keep his concerns to himself as Prudence became equally agitated. _He_ would get to the bottom of this tomorrow, and for now, he would let her believe “The Fifth Wall” was a new show she was _not_ already, and they would go to the casting office together.

He was grateful they were playing characters from the ‘80s which limited their television consumption to oldies. Prudence was addicted to the crime channel and she’d watch shows like “Locked-Up Abroad” which just made her even more high-strung about her visa situation. Now that both of them were living in the ‘80s, their television was limited to episodes of the oldies; sometimes they’d watch “The Twilight Zone” or “Bewitched” or “The Golden Girls” or reruns of the 1960’s “Star Trek episodes” when they were off the crime channels.

Prudence got to watch “Casablanca” for the first time, which absurdly she knew from a short story from in a manga called “Sailor Moon” where one of the characters, Sailor Mars, had a side-story called “Casablanca Memory”. Patrick, who’d to drama school, of course had seen all the classics and was usually surrounded by others who’d similar seen the classics repeatedly, even knew all the words, quoted them. Patrick had seen the classics hundreds of times himself. She laughed and didn’t take him seriously, when he told her he liked sitting with her to watch _her_. Patrick enjoyed watching Prudence watch the films for the first time.

Every 23:00 on weekdays, the crime channel would play two “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” episodes back-to-back until midnight. The theme song, “Funeral March of a Marionette” by Charles Gounod, played from the flat screen TV on the wall in front of their bed.

Prudence snuggled up to his torso in her sleep. Patrick was glad to have her in his bedroom right now. He didn’t want to be alone tonight. For the first time, he was more afraid of Los Angeles than she was.

It was 29 minutes to midnight and a second episode of “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” had just about begun, and another had just finished—with a sweet twist that Patrick knew Prudence would’ve enjoyed if she hadn’t fallen asleep beside him.

Patrick couldn’t sleep. And he wouldn’t even try. He didn’t want to close his eyes and wake up to another plot twist.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologise for this being so badly-written. I was in a hurry to get this published on a specific date (March 12, 2019) to time-stamp the 5-word premise. I'm not the best writer (or actress—LOL) so I may kind of suck at the execution, but I really think the idea itself is still worth claiming. I might self-publish this story (along with its two B-sides, "The Vegan" and "Plotosus") and if I do, I will have a better-edited version of this. Sorry!


End file.
